Under the Sons'
by usernamesweretaken
Summary: Short version: Space pirates with superpowers. Long version: Under the Sons' is a zistopian Sci-Fi AU in which Judy must face her biases and help the rest of her crew aboard the Navy ship 'Sunstrike' do the same in a galaxy with a tyrannical government, newly appearing superpowers, and a lot of confusion. Previously titled "Sons of Sol"
1. Prologue

After the experimental terraforming of Earth's Luna into a completely livable world back in 2263, mammalkind was able to rapidly increase their spacefaring technology due to the capability to launch spacecraft much more cheaply in the moon's lower gravity. Not long after that, Mars was also terraformed and colonized. However, life was still confined to just one solar system. It wasn't until 2381 that a young prodigy by the name of Leonard Horning invented a lightweight, low energy drive capable of reaching near light speed that the planet Proxima B orbiting the twin stars of Alpha Centauri A and B was colonized.

Roughly 400 years later, a new drive was invented. The brilliant inventor Zefram Cochrane invented a 'hyperdrive'. When paired with the Horning drive, it allowed ships to travel at speeds equivalent to roughly 5000 times the speed of light by essentially pulling the vessel out of physical space and into a dimension that seemed to be a compressed version of normal space. There is no matter in this 'hyperspace,' as it came to be known, but if a craft were to travel 1 lightyear in hyperspace and then come back out, it would have traveled 5276.74172346 lightyears in 'real' space.

Once mammals had the ability to move through hyperspace they expanded too quickly for the governments back on earth to handle, causing multiple disagreements about whom the newly colonized planets would belong to. More and more of these conflicts escalated into all-out war. In a few short years, almost every government was at war, leading to the largest conflict in the history of mammalkind.

On November 11, 2823, all of the remaining governments signed a treaty ending the war and laying out how a new government, designed to avoid further conflicts would work. Each earth government would become a member of a council, joint in leadership of the rapidly expanding civilization. Each colonized planet would be put into a group with ninety-nine other planets. Every group of a hundred planets would act as a province, with their own largely independent governing systems.

This system worked beautifully well for five centuries of a mammalian golden age until a prey dominance group known as the "Sons of Sol" launched an entirely unexpected coup on the five hundredth anniversary of the end of the great war. Approximately two hundred battleships came out of hyperspace directly above the capitol on Earth while the entire planets defensive weaponry was mysteriously offline. When they took control, anyone who spoke out against the Sons' was killed. Many of the provinces fought back against them, but it was only a matter of time before the entirety of colonized space was under their control.

Every predator on every planet is forced to wear a shock collar. Taxes are higher than ever before in order to fuel an enormous military, which every planet is required to send at least 2% of its population into. If a planet doesn't agree with something, then they are placed under martial law until they did.

Two hundred years after the coup, only a few 'frontier worlds' remain free of the influence of the Sons'. Fortunately, a Resistance has appeared to defend these worlds from tyranny. The Resistance is based on a planet marked in galactic archives simply as planet 4546B, though it is more commonly known as "New Zootopia," named after Earth's largest city before the Sons' took over. While the Resistance doesn't have nearly as many resources as their oppressors, they make up for it in the skill of their pilots, and rumor has it that its engineers rival even geniuses like Horning and Cochrane in brilliance.

A few years after the Resistance arose, reports of mammals near the edge the galaxy gaining strange powers that appeared to bend the laws of physics to the limits began to appear. Because of the resources that the government put into attempting to study, and in some cases cover up, these phenomena, the Resistance was given a period of time to grow into a force that could stand its own against the oppressive government when otherwise they would have been quickly crushed by the Sons' superior military.


	2. Introduction

Judy Hopps awoke with a start. This was the third time that she had had the dream. She was in a cell on an unfamiliar ship, with an uncollared fox looking at her through the bars with a very toothy grin on his face and green eyes that appeared as if they were staring into her soul, cataloging every fear and weakness that she had. She knew that it was just a dream, but it always felt so real, this time more so than ever. She needed to calm down.

I'm the best captain this navy has. I can't be captured, she thought in an attempt to reassure herself. It didn't work.

Two years ago, Ensign Judith hopps had joined the Navy in order to fight piracy and help keep innocent mammals safe. Her good judgment and quick decision making had moved her rapidly up the ranks into her current position as captain of her own ship, the S.S. Sunstrike.

Unfortunately, commanding a ship meant that she had to take orders that she wasn't entirely entirely comfortable with. Her current assignment was to relieve the mayor of a planet that had failed to pay enough taxes of his duty. She didn't enjoy this kind of job, but orders were orders, and this order had come directly from admiral bellwether herself. This particular planet was a poor farming world, much like the one that she had grown up on. She knew from experience that the citizens would be having difficulty both supporting themselves and paying the taxes that were quite frankly ridiculous.

Uneasy though she was, she knew she had to get out of bed. The dream had come just half an hour before her alarm would have woken her anyway, so there wasn't any point in trying to get any more sleep.

Judy rolled out of her bed and began to get ready for the day. After she had gotten into her uniform and freshened up, She headed towards the mess hall to get some breakfast.

Upon entering the large room, big enough to hold the entire 130 mammal crew of the ship at once, her first officer, Nathaniel Melar, gave her a quick salute. "The admiral left a message for you. It wasn't urgent enough to wake you, but she said to give it to you as soon as you were awake." The impala said as he handed her a tablet.

Judy started walking towards the breakfast as she read through the message. "How long ago was this received?" She asked over her shoulder.

"Only a few hours." Nathan replied.

After she had returned from the counter with a small bowl of salad, Nathan asked, "Might I ask why you're up earlier today?"

"I had the dream again. I could swear it feels more real every time."

"That bad? Anyway, what's the message about?"

"Apparently there's been some suspicious activity in the system just over from the one that we're headed to right now, and were supposed to go check it out after we deal with the mayor. It's probably just some more pirates; there's been more of them around recently," She stated. "And why are we checking these out after we deal with the mayor? Protecting innocent mammals should be more important to the government than getting their paws on a few extra tax dollars."

"I'm inclined to agree with you, but those are our orders. We don't really have much choice."

"You're right," Judy sighed. "It just doesn't feel right."

"I should probably get back to Engineering. Marsha is still a bit too… enthusiastic about her new job." Nathan saluted and walked towards the door.

About 8 months ago, Judy's former engineer, Jackson Pine, was captured by a band of pirates while he was on the surface of a planet looking for spare parts. Jack was almost like a brother to Judy. They had grown up on neighboring farms on a relatively secluded planet, and they had both wanted to join the Navy. Nathan, though primarily an officer, also had experience with engineering and had agreed to take over until the replacement was trained.

They had picked up Marsha Turing to replace Jack only last week. Seeing as an elephant, one of the largest mammals, had replaced a rabbit, one of the smaller ones, there had been a bit of trouble finding a room for her to use. Luckily there was a Bison, being a mammal in between size classes, who was willing to move into a smaller room.

Even though they were almost polar opposites in size, Marsha reminded Judy a lot of herself when she had first joined the Navy. She was always in a good mood, and was easily excitable. Judy wondered how long that would last once Marsha got a taste of what the Navy really did on most of its missions.

After she finished eating, and silently promising herself for about the five hundredth time that she would find Jack, she started towards the bridge and mentally prepared to end the career of a mammal who had probably done nothing wrong.

* * *

"With whom do I have the pleasure of meeting today?" Mayor Rackston asked with a cheery tone and a smile, though the deer's eyes' belied that his presentation was forced.

"I'm captain Hopps of the Galactic Navy's S.S. Sunstrike. I wish that I could say that I'm pleased to meet you too, but unfortunately the circumstances of this meeting don't really allow that." Judy Sighed. "Shall we get this over with?"

The mayor let out a sigh in return and said "I can't really find a reason not to."

"If it helps I don't like what I'm about to do any more than you do. I grew up on a farming colony like this one and know how hard the taxes can be." She switched to a more professional tone and continued, "Harold Rackston, you are hereby officially relieved of you position as mayor of this colony by mandate of the Galactic Navy. A replacement will arrive in a few days. In the meantime, you will be allowed to continue with light mayoral duties in an unofficial capacity, but you will not be allowed to make any legislative decisions."

"Thank you," the deer said, which surprised Judy

"Why? I just fired you from your job and now you will have to stand by while an unelected puppet of the government does your job for you."

"Thank you for understanding, and making this as painless as you could." he clarified.

"You don't need to thank me. I just feel a bit guilty about all this" She said with a small blush. "I joined the Navy in order to help other mammals, not to mess up their lives." Judy glanced at her watch. "I wish that I could stay longer, but there has been some suspicious activity in the next system over. Farewell, Mr. Rackston."

"Stay safe up there. The Navy could use more mammals like you." The stag said as Judy left his office to prepare the crew for takeoff.

* * *

As Nicholas Wilde headed towards the bridge of his ship, he reflected on the plan. This would be the first time that the Resistance would officially reveal itself to the Sons', and It was his job to make sure that they heard him. He was going to capture an entire enemy ship, without harming a single member of it's crew. Said ship was only one system over from the one that he was in right now. A fake message had been sent to the captain of that ship saying that there was some 'suspicious activity' in this system and to go check it out.

If anybody was harmed, the government would exaggerate it greatly, and the resistance would become just some more pirates in the eyes of the public. If this was successful, however, the resistance would gain the support of the public. Those were only the strategic reasons, completely leaving out the moral wrongness of killing another sentient being.

As Nick arrived in the bridge, he checked in with the ship's mechanic, Finnick. "Is the ship ready?"

The Thousand Year Falcon was a smaller frigate-class starship with a crew of 63 mammals. It's design focused mainly on maneuverability, unlike many of the Navy's ships, which were designed with more firepower in mind.

"Yes Sir," the shorter fox replied in an unusually deep voice for a mammal of his size.

"You know I don't like it when my crew calls me that. Everyone on this ship is important, not just me."

"Exactly," Finnick smirked, "Sir."

"Oh, so it's gonna be that way?" Nick Scoffed in mock hurt.

"A ship just came out of hyperspace on the other side of the planet! It's the target!" the ship's navigator called out before Finnick could reply.

Every mammal on the bridge turned their eyes towards Nick, awaiting their captain's orders.


	3. Confrontation

**Author's Note:** Hello from the future! The proofreading on the first few chapters was _really bad_, so I went back to fix it. This chapter is probably also pretty bad, but I'm too lazy to fix it as well. just know that it does get better.

* * *

Judy felt the familiar lurch in her stomach as the ship came out of hyperspace into the system that the 'suspicious activity' had occurred in. As far as star systems went, this one was fairly dull.

The sun was about twice as large as Sol in Earth's system. There were five planets, all of which were smaller than earth and had very little in the way of atmosphere, except for the fourth planet, which was a gas giant that was fairly similar to jupiter. The largest moon of the second planet of the system had an abandoned research facility on it, but other than that there were no traces of civilization nearby.

"George, start scanning for anything out of the ordinary." George Mosing was the ship's navigator, and also the smallest mammal on board at a mere 3 inches, short even for a mouse.

"Yes sir." He replied.

When the scan was about halfway around the system, something turned up.

"There's a ship! I can't scan it in any detail until were closer, but it looks like it's armed, and it sure as hell isn't part of the Navy."

Judy turned on the ship's PA system. "Attention! We just picked up a ship on the scans, and are about to move closer. Brace yourselves for acceleration."

As she turned of the PA, she called out to the pilot, "Bring us to about 500 miles away from that ship. I want to know what we're up against before we close in. Any sensible pirate would've left by now."

"Aye… aye… captain…"

Judy was pushed back into her chair as the Horning kicked in. Not for the first time, she wondered why sci-fi movies always seemed to ignore the unavoidable forces that came into play when accelerating from zero miles an hour to over one-hundred-fifty-thousand miles an hour in under a minute.

As they started to decelerate, Judy was pushed in the opposite direction into her seatbelt. When they finally came to a stop, George started to scan the ship in more detail.

"What do you have so far?" Judy asked.

"It's about half of our size. There's no sort of identification on it, so yeah, probably a pirate. It's turning. I'm pretty sure that they know that we're here. Wait… it's turning towards us. And… What!? There were some strange energy readings coming towards us and now there's no more signal! What the fu-"

He was interrupted by Judy shouting "Battle stations! It's a trap!" over the PA system.

"The scans aren't being jammed, if that were the case I would be getting gibberish, not nothing." George speculated with a hint of hysteria. "It's almost like the scanner was destroyed. But the shields haven't been hit, so that can't be the case… What the hell is going on?"

"Our targeting isn't working!" A voice said over the comm system.

Judy turned on the PA again and said "EVERYBODY CALM DOWN! Our scanner just got… I don't know exactly what happened, but it isn't working. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Use the optical sensors and aim manually. Be ready to fire if It comes into range"

Just as Judy turned the PA off, George said "It's hailing us! Should I put it through?"

"Yes." Judy said grimly. "I want to know what the hell just happened."

The large screen showing what was in front of the ship changed to another view. One of another ship's bridge, not unlike their own. Except this one had one key difference: its crew contained predators. Uncollared predators.

"Hello," said a fox who appeared to be the captain of the ship, "I am Nicholas Wilde, captain of the Resistance ship Thousand Year Falcon. I'm going to capture you, and would be much obliged if you would surrender peacefully." He said it all with an easy grin on his face, as if this was just any conversation.

Judy's eyes widened. It was the fox from her dream.

Then her eyes narrowed. "What the fuck!? Resistance? Capture? No! I'm not giving over my whole crew to a bunch of predator pirates! Plus, our ship is twice as big as yours! What the hell makes you think that you can captures us in the first place?"

The fox seemed a bit taken aback by her sudden display of aggression, but it was only on his face for a moment before the calm grin returned. "Well, aren't you a feisty one! Anyway, to answer your final question, I have a few advantages: first, I have working sensors; second, I can shoot through your shield; and third, I'm a lot more maneuverable than you are. The rest of your questions will be answered once you are on my ship. Now would like to surrender peacefully or do I have to do this the hard way?" He still had that infuriating grin on his face.

"What is, exactly, the 'hard way?'"

"That's when we start firing again, slowly taking off more and more bits of your ship until you decide that you don't want the hard way anymore. If you still don't change your mind after a sufficient amount of damage, then we switch to the really hard way. You don't even want to ask about that. If you decide to go the hard way, we would be much obliged if you would deactivate your shields. This ammunition is expensive." He was still acting as if this was just any old conversation, not the capturing a ship that literally outgunned his two to one.

At this point Judy was shaking with rage. This fox had caused her to lose sleep, even if he didn't know it, managed to put her entire crew at his mercy, claimed to be a member of some 'Resistance' that she had never heard of, and, to top it all off, acted like none of it really mattered. She would've stood up on her chair and screamed at him if Nathan hadn't intervened.

"Calm down, Judy, you're not going to get out of this mess if you're too angry to think properly. Ok, that's better. Now that steam is no longer coming out of your ears, what should we do?"

"Thank you." She said to Nathan before turning back to the screen, to see that Nick had watched her needing to be calmed down like a kit and was clearly amused by that.

"You didn't see that." She said.

"Oh yes we did! We saw the whole thing!" came a deep voice from offscreen.

"Finnick, shut up." Nick told the voice before turning back to the screen. "Now, let's get back on topic: will you surrender?"

Judy had to fight herself to prevent from going into another rage. How was she supposed to answer that question? If she said yes, than she would kill herself over letting her crew be taken without a fight, but if she said no, and some of her crew got hurt as a result… She didn't want to even think about it.

"Why?" She was obviously still angry, but a hint of doubt could be detected in her words "Why do you want to capture us?"

"Because we need to get the attention of your government. We've been working in secret, slowly growing in power, and we've gotten to the point where remaining hidden won't do us much good. We need to demonstrate that we are capable of fending for ourselves, so we either had to capture a Navy ship or destroy one. Destroying one would result in a large number of deaths, and we don't want that, so we chose to capture one."

"If I were to surrender, Hypothetically, What would happen to my crew?"

"You and your more senior officers would be brought onto my ship, and the rest of your crew would be confined to their cabins, except for 3 times a day when they would be brought to the galley to eat in shifts, while some of my crew piloted your ship back to our home base. From there, from there, your crew will transferred to a camp where they will live in relative comfort until we decide to release them or move them somewhere else."

"And how do I know that you are not lying? For all I know you just want to lock us up so that you could eat us later."

"Of course not! We aren't barbarians! A third of my crew are prey species."

Refusing to be budged from her prosecution of Nick, Judy continued "For all I know you're just pretending to be members of some 'resistance' and you're actually just pirat-;"

At that moment Judy's pilot noticed something. It might seem a bit odd to a less knowledgeable observer, but when a sloth gets surprised, it tends to get some attention from those around them.

"... Flash…?" Questioned the sloth

"... Samantha…!" drawled a similar voice from a sloth near the left side of the screen. "You'll… have… To… Tell… me… everything… that… happened… since… I… left…!"

Both crews watched dumbfoundedly as the two sloths seemingly forgot completely about what was happening and began to have a rather animated conversation, or at least it would have been animated had the participants not been sloths."I did not see that coming..." Nick stated.

"Anyway," He added, this time to Judy, "do you surrender yet?"

"Do I have any choice?"

"Not as such, but I still want some form of agreement."

"And you promise not to harm any of my crew?"

"I promise."

Judy sighed and slumped in her chair. "...Fine."

"WHAT!?" Shouted George. "What do you think you're doing? You can't do that! Look at me! I'm 3 fucking inches tall! They don't have any collars on; they'll eat me as soon as they fucking see me!" At this point his words were dripping with rage and delirium. "You can't just give up like that! Don't you care about-"

"If you have any better ideas, then I'm all ears!" Judy snapped. "What other choice did I have?" she continued in a more desolate tone. "If I hadn't surrendered, then they would have just taken us by force. At least this way we're all still alive."

"Are you serious!? 'Still alive?' Dying in combat is better than being eaten alive!"

"Why do you think that they'll eat you?"

"They're uncollared fucking predators and I'm fucking 3 inches tall!" There's a reason that the Son's make predators wear collars!"

"And have sloth, a prey species, that seems very close our own pilot working on their bridge?" Judy countered with a hint of sarcasm, though her tone was still mostly desolate.

George faltered, but only for a moment before he continued with renewed vigor. "The sloth must have been forced into working for them! And all of the other prey on that bridge!"

"They haven't been eaten." Judy tried to reason. "Don't get me wrong, I don't trust them one bit, but what other choice do I have?"

George sputtered, his mind racing to try to find a counter to Judy's argument. "Anything other than capture! Fight them, run away, anything!"

Another voice, completely forgotten, caught both of their attention. "You won't be eaten. Or tortured, beaten, or harmed in any way. We're not evil."

George's immediately slammed his paw on the button to disconnect the communications. "No! I will not let us submit to their vile lies!" George shouted, his voice on the edge of insanity.

Judy sighed. "Nathan, would you please escort George to his quarters? He needs to calm down before he explodes."

George was speechless. He was standing on his chair, fists balled up tightly in rage, his face shaking slightly as Nathan calmly walked over to him.

Nathan kneeled next to Georges chair in an attempt to get closer to eye level. "The captain is right. We don't have a choice. And I really don't think that you're going to get eaten." He soothed.

Still shaking, George replied "I'll go, but don't think that I agree with what you're doing. It's madness."

They all watched as George stomped out of the bridge after Nathan.

"Alright. Now that that's over, we need to talk to… them… again. Reopen contact." Judy said.

Nothing happened.

"Dammit. That was George's job." Judy walked over to the navigation console and hailed the other ship herself.

After a few seconds the hail was accepted. "I see that there are now a few less mammals on the bridge."

Judy sighed. "Yes. Now let's get this over with."

The plan that was agreed upon was for Judys crew to all lock themselves in their cabins while the command crew waited on the bridge for the boarding party to bring them back to Nick's ship. To Judy, it didn't seem like a very good plan on Nick's part. With the crew locked in their cabins, they could conceal weapons with them, and possibly attack. With her and her senior officers still occupying the bridge, they could attempt a surprise getaway. Judy didn't mention any of this to Nick; she still harbored a small amount of hope that they would find some way out of this.

The only mammal from Judy's command crew not on the bridge was George, who was actively 'not fucking getting eaten by fucking predators' in his quarters. Judy didn't know how she would negotiate with either Nick or George about that, but that was a problem for later.

"Dammit."

"What?" asked Nathan.

"I just don't know if I did the right thing. Today has not been a good day for me." Judy replied.

"You didn't have a choice. If everything goes south, then you'll know that you did what you could to prevent it."

"But I'd also know that it wasn't enough. If I let that happen, then… I don't know, I just… I can't."

"Don't worry. The crew is all already in their cabins; nobody is going to get hurt. We'll all be fine."

Judy was silent for a moment, staring at the wall. "That fox… It's the same one from the dream. It being just a coincidence seems unlikely; that would have to be a really big coincidence. But it's impossible to see into the future. The future hasn't happened yet."

"That does seem a bit odd." Said the Impala. "He Should be here in a few minutes, maybe you should ask him about it."

"How, exactly, would you suggest I do that? Just say 'Oh hi, I don't know anything about you except that you're capturing my ship but I've had repeating dreams about you?' This whole situation is beyond me. I have no idea what to do."

"You're not alone in that respect."


	4. Shady Figures

Nick walked at the head of his small boarding party. Well, there were only five mammals, in it, so it was small in numbers, but four of the five were much larger mammals; two tigers, a lion, and a wolf.

The bridge was at the end of the hall that they were currently walking down. As expected, the door was closed, but less expected was the broken console beside it. The cover was dangling off of it, and the wires appeared to be chewed through. The door could only be opened from the inside.

"Dammit."

He walked up, banged on the door and said "I don't know what you're up to, but it sure isn't helping you. Open the door."

Nothing.

He tried again. Still nothing.

He was about to call in some reinforcements when a voice came through his headset. "Soundproof doors, remember?"

"What? I never heard anything about soundproof doors."

"Section 2 page 3 of the specifications for that ship. 'Due to the proximity of the dining hall to the bridge, the doors to the bridge on this model ship are soundproofed in order to prevent distractions.'

"Shut up. I'm not reading 40 pages of the most convoluted information possible on a ship and you know it. Now tell me how to communicate with the mammals on the bridge. You probably know at least 3 ways."

No answer.

After a second or two of thought, Nick said "Dammit, Savage. That first statement wasn't an order."

"Well why didn't you say so?" Nick could almost hear the smugness dripping off of the voice into a puddle on the floor. "To answer your question, the bridge will be alerted if any security systems get messed with."

Nick looked up and saw two security cameras in the hallway. A few moments later, there was one security camera and one useless lump of glass and metal.

Nick put his gun back in its holster on his side and looked directly at the remaining camera and pointed towards the broken door panel. "Explain."

"We just lost a camera!" called the chief security officer, Lannia.

"Where?"

"Let me check… Just outside the bridge!" Lannia replied. "But the other camera is still functional… wouldn't they want to destroy both of them?"

"I don't know. How about you pull up the footage from the remaining camera. Maybe we'll see something."

"Pulling it up now, sir."

During the course of this exchange, most of the mammals in the room had migrated to Lannia's console so that they could see what was happening. The only exception was Samantha, who was happily snoring in her chair.

"They're all just staring at it. They're definitely not trying to prevent us from seeing what they're doing, so what are they trying to do?" Lannia said.

"Wait a second… look at the console. Not that one, the one for the door. ON THE SCREEN, you idiot!"

As Judy was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, the answer just… appeared in her head. She knew that she couldn't have figured it out on her own; all of her thoughts were going in a completely different direction. There was no sense of profound realization. Nothing 'clicked into place.' One moment she didn't have the thought, wasn't anywhere near having that thought, and the next moment she had known exactly why the five predators outside of the bridge were all staring at a camera all along. Judy was confused. She knew, logically, that she must be wrong, but every single counterargument that she brought against herself melted away into nothingness in the face of the certainty of that thought.

While Judy was fighting with her own logic, her crew was debating the same problem that she was, and going in the same direction that she had been going before her revelation. It was the exact opposite direction that Judy now knew, somehow, to be true.

"Open the door."

One by one, the mammals on the bridge slowed, and then stopped, their conversations to stare incredulously at their captain.

"What? We don't know why they would've broken that console, or what they're doing, or anything about them. We can't just open the door." Stated Lannia.

"They didn't break the console. They found it broken."

The brows on the mammals that had the capabilities to do so furrowed. "Then why..."

"I don't know why it was broken. I don't even know how I knew that they hadn't broken it." Nathan opened his mouth to say something at that point but Judy stopped him. "I know what that sounds like. I've been doing mental acrobatics trying to figure out what the hell happened to my brain, but I just don't know."

"Are you… okay?" asked Nathan.

"I don't know, but I don't think that anything will come from me thinking about it more right now. Open the door."

For a few seconds, nobody did anything, but then Lannia got up and walked towards the console next to the door, which was far less broken than the one on the other side of the door. "Are you sure? Right now they can't get to us, we might be able to think of something." She said, holding her paw a few inches away from the console.

"...I'm sure."

After about a minute of waiting, the door finally opened. All of the mammals in the room, save one, stood up and turned to face the five predators that had just entered through the elevator. None of the newcomers even so much as glanced at any of them, instead walking purposely towards the front of the room, where the only person that hadn't stood up was sitting, next to a darkened window into a much larger room, though they couldn't see what was in it.

The room was large enough for the 20 or so mammals currently standing to all work comfortably at their desks without interfering with each other, but there was very little space not taken up by the desks other than the walkway in the middle. The room was about twice as long as it was wide, giving the five plenty of time to take in their surroundings before arriving at the end of the room.

The chair that the mammal was seated in slowly turned around, revealing a relatively small sheep.

"I'm so glad to finally meet you. Please have a seat." The sheep said indicating a set of chairs around a nearby table. As the six mammals made themselves… not exactly comfortable, the sheep gave two quick claps of her hooves and the rest of the mammals in the room left through a door next to the elevator that the five had entered from.

After they were alone in the room, the sheep continued "I'm sure that you are wondering why I called you here today, but before I tell you, do you know why I choose you, instead of another group of mammals that might be more… in line with the rest of our operations?"

The lead mammal of the group spoke. "Firstly, because we always get the job done, but that isn't the reason that you asked the question for. The reason that you wanted was that you don't care; the fact that we're predators doesn't matter to you."

The small ewe smiled. "I see you've done your homework." Her expression got more serious before she said " Pleasantries aside, let's get straight to the point. This mission will be more difficult than any you've done before. Don't make it be the first one that you fail."

"What's the mission?" Another member of the group asked.

"Revenge. My sister tricked my parents into giving control of the Sons' to her, even though I am the eldest child and it is my birthright."

"So you want what? An assassination?"

"No. Death would be too good for her. I want my sister to see everything that she has worked for ripped apart, right under her nose."

"I assume that this is where we come in?"

"Yes. There is a… resistance forming on the edge of the galaxy. I have managed to keep it hidden from my sister so that it could grow. Now feel that it is ready to fulfill its purpose. I want you to go to them, and… assist them. Move things along, if you will."

"With all due respect, You want a tiny little resistance to destroy an entire galactic empire. It won't work."

"You're the ones that can do anything for the right price."

"You can't afford the right price."

"I won't be paying you with money. Secrecy isn't the only reason that I had you meet me here, at a laboratory, instead of my normal offices. What you are about to see is the biggest secret that the galaxy has to offer, and if you succeed, it can be yours. Doctor!"

A few moments after she said that, another sheep, this one in one of those lab coats that are only ever seen worn by mad scientists on tv in the 1990s, entered the room through a door that they hadn't even known was there.

"Have you heard the rumors about mammals gaining superpowers? Well, they're true." Doctor Janski waited for this to sink in, but the five mammals remained frustratingly stoic. "That doesn't surprise you?"

"Oh, it does, but you can't prime us by telling us that we are about to be told 'the biggest secret the universe has to offer' and the tell us something that has been going around in rumors for years. What would surprise us is if you could give us those powers."

"Erhm… we can't."

"Then why would this convince us to take this job?"

"But we know that it's possible. There is…" He hesitated, looking almost fearful. Glancing towards the other, smaller sheep, he asked: "Am I allowed to talk about that?"

The smaller sheep looked thoughtful for a moment before giving the OK.

"There is a secret lab, not this one, but another one, that has the research that we need to make our project work."

"Then why don't you just have us infiltrate that lab instead of sending us off to start a civil war?"

"Much like my grandmother, I have somewhat of a dramatic flair. Although she was more interested in the more hidden, subtle things, such as naming the Sons of Sol what she did. Her name was Dawn, and dawn is sunrise, and she was the founder of the Sons'. I always found that a little bit too subtle. I prefer the big things. Simply stealing some research notes? That's a bit boring. Crushing a galactic empire with a small resistance? That's more like it."

The leader of the five let out a single hearty laugh before answering "You have yourself a deal."

* * *

Author's Notes:

I officially give up on any pretense of a schedule. You get chapters when you get them.

On another note, I have joined a small Zootopia writing group (I was originally going to say "so you can probably expect the chapters to come out a bit more frequently", but that would probably be a lie). Thank you to SoulUntraveled, commanderAIK, and Rho (AssaultFox is also in the group, but he lives on the other side of the Atlantic, so I haven't interacted with him as much).

I have been thinking some more about this and I now have something that may or may not resemble a plan. At first, I was just writing whatever came to my mind. I'm still going to write what I feel like writing, and my plans will change often. For example, I wrote the first sentence of the last scene planning it to be from Nick's perspective, and then changed it due to a spur-of-the-moment idea to torture you with a cliffhanger.


	5. Cellular Data

While it certainly wasn't as pleasant as Judy's crew's quarters, the cells on Nick's ship were far more comfortable than the cells on any Navy ships. Most Navy ships had about 12 relatively minimalist cells, consisting of just a bunk, toilet, and sink behind some bars, built for a variety of different sizes of mammal. The cells on Nick's ship however, had two actual beds instead of simple bunks, and the bathroom area could be blocked off with a curtain.

Upon arriving at the cells the crew was divided into groups of two. However, Judy, the only non-rodent-sized small mammal on the command crew, got a cell all to herself.

Judy spent roughly two hours moping in the cell before Nick entered the block again after depositing them there.

Nick walked up to Judy's cell and grinned. Everything was exactly the same as it had been in the dream except for one thing: Judy's mindset. In the dream, Judy had been scared, apprehensive. Now, however, Judy was only tired.

"What do you want?" She asked tiredly.

"Let's see… I want a few things. There's the classics, like lots of money, a big house, maybe a few-"

"I'm not in the mood for joking. Just tell me what you want from me."

"Hey!" Nick leaned back, feigning hurt. "Couldn't you have waited until I had finished before you decided to berate me? Besides, you're not exactly in a position to make demands like that."

Judy just sighed.

"Look, Carrots, I know that this isn't your Idea of a grand vacation, but you can relax. It's not like there's anything that you have to worry about right now."

Judy snapped. "This is your idea of 'nothing to worry about'!? I was captured by an unknown party, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what's going to happen to me, I don't know if my crew will be alright, and to top it all off my brain has been doing weird things that I don't understand lately! There's a hell of a lot for me to be worrying about right now! ...And don't call me Carrots!"

Nick took a few steps back. "Wow… Look, I'll be back in a few minutes; I'm gonna go talk to someone real quick." Nick got up from the bench outside of Judy's cell that he had been sitting on and left the room.

After a few minutes, he came back, but instead of going to Judy's cell, he went to Nathan and Lannia's. "I've been told that it will be a lot easier to talk to the captain if the impala is nearby. Alex, if you would please?" The wolf that had remained in the room to guard the prisoners shifted his gun to a more ready position before pressing a few buttons on a console in the wall, causing the door to that cell to open. "Nathan, was it? Please follow me."

Nathan was about to comply when he realized something. "Wait a second… Who told you that?"

Nick already had an answer prepared for that question. "The individual in question asked that I didn't tell you anything about h- Them, excuse me, for the time being."

This perked Lannia's interest. "So it's a him?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

Lannia had watched the fox both on a screen from the bridge of Judy's ship and in person, and she noticed that he seemed to take everything casually, so she decided to try something. She started to grin before replying "Ah c'mon. Can't you just tell us a little bit?"

Before Nick could answer, a good-natured voice came through the speakers in the room. "Watch out, Lannia's an excellent security agent. She can figure out a way to get mammals to tell her almost anything. And to answer your question, yes, I am a he."

Now Lannia was really interested, and suspicious, about what was happening. "Ok. Who the hell are you, and why the hell do you know that?" she glanced around, and in a much smaller, less accusatory voice asked "And where should I look to talk to you? It feels weird not to have something to look at when I'm talking to someone, even if it isn't the actual person themselves."

A brief chuckle came through the speakers before the voice responded. "I can't tell you everything about me right off the bat; I gotta leave some of it for later. And you can look at the camera above the door."

During the conversation with the mysterious voice, Judy was coming to a realization.

"Jack?"

Everyone in the room instantly went silent. Even though nobody was talking in the first place.

After a few moments, Nathan broke the silence. "That chuckle did sound remarkably similar to Jack's, but the voice is wrong, and why would Jack be on this ship?"

"This feels just like it did right before we were captured, when the console was broken. I don't know how I know it, but that was Jack."

"It's still just a feeling. You don't have any evidence to prove it, except that that laugh sounded a bit like his. These have been a stressful few hours for you, maybe you should get some sleep and think about it logically in the morning." Nathan tried to reason.

Judy sighed. "You're probably right. I'm just making unreasonable assumptions because of all the excess stress."

Just then, the voice came back on, this time sounding extremely excited. "This is great! Do you know what this means? Our chances of actually winning this just went up by about 200 percent!"

That definitely got the attention of Nick, who immediately called out "What is it?!" as Alex perked up.

"I'll explain in my office. Bring Judy with you."

Nick paused, but before he could say anything, Judy asked: "So are you Jack or not?"

"Oh, sorry. Lemme just…" The speakers went silent for a moment before a new voice said "There, that's better. Yes, I'm Jack"

Upon hearing the new voice, Lannia said "Ok. I'm done. Just… No. It can't be."

This was followed by a variety of similar reactions from many of the other crew members. The only mammal who still seemed to be capable of coherent thought was Judy. "Take me to him." Her voice wasn't pleading, and it wasn't demanding either. Her voice was extremely calm, even though that was the exact opposite of her mental state at the moment.

Nick frowned. ...What? I knew that capturing someone would be complicated, but this? Savage wants me to bring her to him, she wants me to bring her to him, but she's a prisoner. I'm not supposed to just let a prisoner waltz around the ship! Why does everything have to end in a dilemma?

"Don't you dare talk to me about dilemmas. Do you have any idea what I've been through just now? I-"

"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to myself."

Then Alex interjected "...Sir, you weren't talking at all."

"Don't be stupid, I must have said something. Otherwise how would she have replied? I thought I was only thinking, but I must've said it aloud."

"...No, You definitely didn't say anything out loud."

Judy collapsed even further, if that was even possible, which, evidently, it was. "Look, I have no Idea what's going on here, and you don't seem to know either. But Jack does know. So could you please Just take me to him so that we can get this all cleared up?"

"...alright. I'll take you."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** As some of you may know (actually you probably don't know, unless you're one of the 4 other people involved), I'm part of a discord server for author's of Zootopia fanfiction. Originally, we wanted to stay small, with only five people, but after talking, we've decided that more people wouldn't be a bad Idea. If you're interested in maybe joining, then leave a comment, and I'll get back to you.

Apart from that, I'm really looking forward to writing the next few chapters, in which the backstories of pretty much all of the main characters are explained.

And now for the stereotypical 'thank your readers for reading, and then proceed to beg for comments/kudos'. Seriously, though. I do appreciate it when other people enjoy my writing, and I appreciate it even more when they show that they appreciate it. Feel free to leave 20% more kudos and comments than you would normally leave.


	6. Storytime I

Somehow, despite the far more bleak, industrial interior, the atmosphere of Nick's ship had a much more positive feel. On Judy's ship, many of the mammals were just doing their job; coasting from day to day. On Nick's, the crew was alive. It wasn't a Sirian party cruise or anything, but the few crewmembers that Judy saw on her way to Jack seemed to be relatively happy.

After the brief walk down two corridors and up a staircase, Judy, Nick, and the caribou that Nick had summoned to accompany them arrived at a door. The door was built for mammals of about Nick's size so the caribou would have to remain outside. Nick was about to press the 'talk' button on the console beside the door, but before he could touch it, Jack's voice, seemingly out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time, said "Come on in! The door's unlocked."

Nick automatically started to reach for the door, and then stopped. "These aren't the kind of door that you can just open. These doors are electric; there's no handle."

"So? This is my workshop. Do you really expect that to be an issue?"

"...Good point." Nick resumed reaching for the door, and just before his paw touched it, it opened.

The inside of the room was cluttered with, well, 'Stuff with a capital S' was the best way that Judy could describe it. To her left was an array of shelves that would've looked more at home in a warehouse than on a spaceship. Across from the door, there was an apparently half-finished mechanical object. The only part of the room that Judy would consider clean was the desk to the right, On which were two stacks of paper, as well as quite a few computer monitors.

But the most important thing in the room was the rabbit.

He was taller than most rabbits, and quite lean, despite his lack of physical exercise. His fur was mostly grey, a bit darker than Judy's, but he had a number of almost black stripes on his face, almost like a tiger. He wore a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt which was, somehow, not greasy.

"Judy! So nice to see you again! How have you been? I hope you found a good replacement for me. How did your latest-"

"Whoa whoa whoa. I'm happy that you're okay and all, but _what. The. Hell._ I've been having weird dreams, I've been captured, knowledge has been randomly popping into my head, you're alive and _working with the crew that captured me!_ The only thing keeping me from collapsing on the floor right now is pure willpower and probably a fair amount of insanity. There are so many things that I want to know, but my brain just isn't working well enough to process them into coherent questions. Could you _please_ just… explain?"

Completely unphased by Judy's outburst, Jack said: "There's a lot that I could explain, but I suppose that I should start at the beginning."

Nick interjected. "Wait a second, what about that 'our chances of winning going up by two hundred percent' thing? Shouldn't you explain what that is before diving into a five-hour long story?"

"Relax. It isn't five hours, it's only four and a half hours. I've timed it."

"...Of course you have." Judy said under her breath, and she could've sworn that she saw Nick doing the exact same thing.

"Anyway, so you remember when I got captured, right?"

* * *

The city was pretty normal, as far as cities go. There were shops, restaurants, and apartments. There was hustle, bustle, and traffic jams. Even the climate of this city was average. Perhaps the only thing about this city that Jack hadn't seen in at least 56.98% of all the other cities that he had visited was the color scheme. Most cities were primarily made of greys and browns, but this city, for some reason, had decided that everything should be painted in white and blue. While they were probably aiming for a clean, futuristic appearance, the overall effect turned out to look more like toothpaste than anything else.

Jack was currently walking between two rows of warehouses searching for the one titled "Orson bros. Mechanisms." Well, he wasn't exactly searching for it. He already knew that it would be another four buildings down, but mammals gave him strange looks if he didn't at least glance at the signs that he passed. He didn't mind the looks, but it bothered others.

Jack liked Orson Bros. There was one near almost every major spaceport, they carried even the most uncommon parts, and most importantly, they organized their warehouses in a way that _actually made sense_. Admittedly, their customer service was atrocious, but Jack never needed it anyway. Today, he only needed one part, a nine-and-three-quarters pipe bolt, but he was running low on a few other parts as well, and already had a route planned through the warehouse that would take him past all of the parts he planned to buy.

Jack was only two buildings away from the warehouse when something caught his eye. He decided to glance at that instead of the miscellaneous signs that he passed as he walked.

The thing that had caught Jack's attention was an alley between two warehouses. He couldn't see anything in the alley, but he trusted his senses, so he decided to go closer to check it out anyway.

Upon arriving at the alley entrance, Jack saw two things. To his left was one warehouse, and to his right was another. Jack would've shrugged if there was someone with him, but there wasn't, so he turned around to continue his walk to Orson Bros.

A few seconds later, he felt something sharp pierce his back and he fell flat on his face.

From inside the supposedly empty alley came two voices. "See? I told you I'm the Master of Disguises."

"Still… _walls!?_"

"Yeah. I pull off a wolf nearly every day, and walls don't move, so they're easy."

"But _how?_"

"Easy. You put on the wall costume, and you stand still."

"I KNOW THAT! _Why_ does that work?"

"I just told you. You put on a cos-"

"Forget it, Wooly. Let's just get the damn rabbit and get out of here."

"You're the boss, Doug."

The only being to witness the two sheep carrying the snoring rabbit back into the alley was a pigeon, who promptly forgot about it and continued trying to see if the size 12 hex bolt that she had found was edible.

* * *

Jack's thoughts were drifting. He hated it. Why couldn't he just _think_? If he could actually formulate thoughts then he could figure out exactly why his thoughts wouldn't formulate. Wait a second… He _was_ formulating thoughts, they were just not useful thoughts. He could think complaints about not thinking just fine, but he couldn't think the thoughts that he wanted to think. Unless…

That was better. Jack found that most problems could be solved by thinking about them differently. Instead of thinking about trying to think more useful thoughts, Jack simply thought about more useful things.

He was in a bed. He didn't remember getting into a bed, at least not more recently than he remembered getting out of one.

The room that the bed was in looked familiar, but then all Navy ships looked pretty much the same. So he was in a Navy ship, he knew that much, but how did he get here? It definitely wasn't his bedroom, and all of the other bedrooms of his size on the _Sunstrike_ were taken, so he definitely wasn't there.

After a few more moments of thinking, Jack started to notice repeat thoughts, so he decided to get out of the bed and take a look around.

The room looked exactly like the spare quarters on every other Navy ship that Jack had seen. The entrance was on one wall, the wall to the right of that one had the door to an en-suite bathroom and a nondescript painting of a landscape somewhere. The wall opposite the entrance had a small kitchen, if a few cabinets and a laser oven was enough to warrant kitchen status, and the bed backed up against the final wall, which, for some reason, was orange. That was the one thing that Jack didn't understand about the Navy's designs.

After his excursion around the room, Jack went over to the panel beside the door and pressed the "open" button. It was locked.

As if to confirm Jack's suspicions, A small whirring sound caused Jack to glance up and notice a camera. This was not a normal crew quarter.

Jack was a prisoner. He didn't know who or what, but some one wanted him for something.

Jack disagreed. He was going to find a way out of this, and stop whatever mammal was in charge from doing it again. Whatever it was.

First, Jack needed to escape this room. Luckily for him, he knew the Navy's operating system inside and out. Literally.

Jack again stepped towards the door console, and Jack pressed the button on the top of the monitor and held his finger against the bottom-left corner of the screen. Sure enough, the console hard-rebooted, which would, in theory, stop any active programs and give him free rein over anything that the console had access to.

When the loading bar that had appeared on the screen vanished, Jack checked the connections. In most cases, there would be a connection to the ship's primary computers, but this one only had local connections. Whoever had converted this room into a prison had done a good job. Unfortunately for them, they didn't know Jack.

Jack grabbed the remote light switch from the nightstand and carefully removed the back panel. After that, he held the remote up to the console and pressed the link button.

The remote wouldn't be able to do anything on its own, but it used the same wireless frequencies as the rest of the ship, so it would allow jack's console to interact, if only at a short range, with most of the electronic components of the ship.

After linking the switch to the console, jack browsed the channels until he found a camera, and sent its feed to the screen of the console. It wasn't the camera in his room, as he had hoped, but it was still good to know about the deer with an assault rifle standing outside. Good thing he hadn't immediately opened the door.

Jack tried again, this time finding the camera that he wanted. Jack checked where the feed of the camera in his room was going. As it happened, it was only being stored, so nobody had seen him hack into the console.

Still, jack would have to do something to prevent any suspicion, should someone check the footage.

Jack moved the footage of when he had woken up forward and placed repeat footage of when he was sleeping in the gap, covering up all of his activity so far.

He would still need a way to cover up his future actions, but already had a plan on how he would do that.

Jack went back to the bed, got under the covers, and sat there. Occasionally he would turn over. After about 10 minutes of tossing and turning, Jack got back out of the bed and rummaged around in the cabinets. Jack already knew that they were all empty, but that was irrelevant.

After his rummage, He went to the bathroom. Four minutes later, he walked back out.

When he completed his restroom break, Jack sat on the edge of his bed and meditated for a good while.

Jack was acting normal with a fervor. He made sure that the camera caught as much of it as possible, but not too much.

Once Jack thought that he had done enough normalness, he went back to the console and wrote a program that would splice together different sections of "normalness" to replace the camera feed with.

Now that Jack had some privacy, he could get to the real fun. If he could connect to the main computer system, then he could access the ship's files and figure out why he was here. But to do that he would need to get closer, and he was currently locked in a room with a guard by the only exit.

So he'd have to make another exit.

He looked around, and his gaze came to rest upon the laser oven. A laser oven was a common device used to heat food, akin to a twentieth-century microwave, but it could heat food without half of the food still being frozen and the other half scalding. It worked by using an array of weak lasers to individually heat sections of the food, ultimately creating a pleasant dining experience.

Though the lasers were weak on their own, if Jack could focus them all on the same spot, it should be enough to cut a piece of aluminum a few millimeters thick.

After about an hour of tinkering, using primarily parts from the laser oven, but also including the bedside lamp's light bulb (Because Jack wanted to have an indicator light. A tool without an indicator light wasn't a tool worth using.), Jack had made a functional, if crude, laser cutter.

If this ship was anything like his ship, and he knew it was, then there should be an open space behind the bathroom wall. Jack lugged his escape tool into the bathroom and started cutting.

The process wasn't fast by any means, and it took a good twenty minutes before Jack had a hole large enough to crawl through.

Even after the hole had been cut, he had to wait another ten minutes to let the edges cool down enough that he could safely pass through it.

Crawling through the hole, Jack emerged into a jungle of pipes and wires. Jack grinned. It was nice to be in the inner workings of the ship, but this ship was the _exact_ same model as the _sunstrike_, meaning Jack would have a far easier time manipulating things. His kitnappers wouldn't know what hit them.

Jack knew that he would need a way to interface with the ship computer, so he crawled back through his hole to remove the door console from the wall, taking care to keep the wires intact.

Crawling through the hole yet again, Jack headed towards where he knew the bridge lay, intent on figuring out why he was here.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This is the first chapter that I've actually written an outline for, so I'm interested to know if you folks notice any differences. It's also my longest chapter so far, and I'd like to know: do you like the 1.5-3k word chapters? Should I try to make my chapters longer? Did I take the wall joke too far (I had originally planned for the alley to be legitimately empty when I wrote the "To his left was one warehouse, and to his right was another." part, but once I got the idea for the wall joke, I couldn't help myself)? Any and all feedback is appreciated. Seriously. Comments and Kudos can make my day.

I would like to thank all of the members of the Writers' Box (boxes are implied to have foxes) Discord server, particularly Untraveled and commanderAIK. I value your tips and suggestions and look forward to our discussions each week (except when it doesn't happen, because scheduling across time zones is way harder than you might expect.


	7. Storytime II

Holding the console between his teeth, Jack climbed through the narrow wire port into the maintenance chamber beneath the bridge. He was here. The answers to his questions were only a few short meters away, only blocked by a few wires that could be easily sidestepped.

With any luck, there would be a backup port or two somewhere in the room that he could plug his console into. Jack could disconnect one of the consoles in the bridge and use that port, but if a console suddenly turned off, then this was the first place that the crew above him would look.

The chamber wouldn't fit a mammal much larger than him, but he still had a few inches between the tips of his ears and the grey ceiling. Wiring covered most of the walls and there were enough cables across the floor that he had to step with caution. Unfortunately, this made finding a place that Jack could plug in the console like finding a needle in a haystack.

After about five minutes of methodically searching for a place to plug the console in, Jack found a spot. It was directly below where the navigator would sit. Evidently, there had been an issue with that particular console in the past, and a new wire was installed alongside the old one.

Jack carefully removed the ends of the rubber insulation from the old wires and connected them to the respective wires on the console that he had brought with him. After the console's screen lit up, Jack immediately attempted to figure out what had caused these wires to be replaced.

After a few minutes of checking various logs, Jack found nothing out of the ordinary and moved on to what he had come here for in the first place: answers.

Navigating to the main directory of the ship, Jack opened the mission logs, and alongside the usual bureaucracy, there was one locked file. Luckily, Jack knew a variety of methods for getting around such security features.

The simplest way was to write a program that would insert itself into the locked file and then copy the contents into a separate, unlocked version. This method was dangerous, however, in that if there were any programs crucial to the running of the rest of the file, then the copying process would temporarily stop them and possibly corrupt the rest of the file.

Jack opted for a slightly modified version that would only copy text files. He might miss out on something interesting if there were any other file types, but at least he wouldn't break anything.

It took Jack a longer time than it usually would to write such a program (not that he usually had to write programs to hack into his own spaceship) due to the lack of keypad, but Jack managed to do it in under fifteen minutes.

After Jack inserted the program into the file through a backdoor using the developer terminal, he watched as the file was slowly copied over.

...13%...

...42%...

...76%...

...99%...

...99%...

...100%

Finally, the files had finished copying. Jack opened the newly created folder and glanced over its contents. There were a few more files with no purpose other than bureaucratic safeguards, a file labeled "objectives" and a file labeled "background." The background file was quite large, and probably the reason why the final percent had taken so long. Jack decided to open the objectives file first.

He stared at the file for a long time after reading it. Most mammals would've had to read it again, but Jack only sat there, thinking. The fact that whoever was commanding this ship had so much information on him wasn't what bothered him. what bothered him was that whoever was in charge wanted to force him to work on a project in a secret laboratory without his permission. If they had just asked, he probably would've said yes. It was almost guaranteed to offer more of a challenge than his current post as a glorified mechanic.

Moving on, Jack opened the background file. After reading the beginning of that, Jack decided that no, he wouldn't have said yes if they just asked him. He certainly wasn't going to help out someone who was experimenting on live mammals without their consent.

Even as he was revolted by the method that was being used for study, Jack couldn't help but be immensely fascinated by the subject. Superpowers were real! They weren't what most people would expect, but still, Superpowers! Curiously, all of the recorded powers seemed to be bizarre and twisted versions of famous scientific theories. One mammal seemed to be able to change inertia. Normally, inertia remains constant. It needs effort to move stationary objects and similarly needs effort to stop moving things. However, This mammal seemed to be able to adjust the inertia of an object so that a different amount of effort relative to the object's mass would be required.

Unfortunately, almost all of the powered mammals ended up dead. Some of them were killed when whoever was running the lab tried to capture them, some were killed by misunderstanding their own powers, and one was even killed by superstitious neighbors.

Only a few mammals were successfully captured, but no details on what happened to them after they were taken to the lab were present in the report.

As much as Jack would've loved to learn more about these superpowers, He also had to figure out how to get off this damn ship. Scrolling further down the file, past the entire powers section, Jack found something that was even more surprising than the bending of physics.

Science was discovering new things all the time, but mammalian nature remained fairly constant. It was for this reason that when Jack found out that there was a Resistance that the Sons hadn't immediately crushed in a display of might he had to read it three times to make sure that it was true.

Normally, he would get things the first time that he read them, and even now, he knew that the text wouldn't have changed in the time it took him to bring his eyes back to the top of the paragraph after reading it, but he didn't usually find out that the biggest constant in the modern universe other than the laws of physics, which now seemed somewhat inconstant anyway, was doing something that he wouldn't have predicted given two weeks of preparation and study.

Quickly reminding himself that gawking wouldn't get him off this ship anytime soon, Jack read further into this resistance. As he discovered more and more, Jack began to think that maybe the Resistance could be his avenue for escape.

Previously, Jack had had the same mindset that he now realized most of the galaxy was trapped in. Rebellions were bad, they always ended in tears for those that were a part of them and those around them, and that the participants had all lost their minds.

Now, after seeing what the empire was doing behind its citizens backs( not that Jack hadn't already known that they weren't perfect, but this was a bit too far) and seeing that this resistance had yet to kill a single person, burn a single farm, or sow any chaos, he realized that the members of this resistance were possibly the only sane mammals in the universe.

Not only did the Resistance seem far more moral and just than the Empire, but it also appeared to be a few steps ahead as well. There were evidently enough brains behind them, as the Resistance had developed a code that the Empire had yet to break, which was no small feat.

That code, however, was also the biggest issue preventing Jack from contacting the Resistance for help.

He knew that the code would have to be simple enough that it could be both encoded and decoded without a large computer, as members would need to be able to communicate with each other in a convenient manner. He also knew that it wasn't something that the Empire would be able to crack, so he knew that blasting the files with thousands of different decryptions wouldn't get him any closer.

He would need to crack the code manually. Based on the size of the encrypted files, the communications were most likely done in audio rather than text, which would make things a bit more difficult. frequency swapping was something that a computer could do, and thus would've already been tried by the empire. Similarly, rotations, transpositions, and shifting were also off the menu.

Come to think of it, just about anything with a modern mindset wouldn't work. That left two options: either try old, almost forgotten techniques, or trying to find a new way around the problem. If Jack knew the empire, which he was pretty sure that he did (though they did hide the existence of something that would probably be considered their enemy), then they would have completely overlooked the past and would be looking instead for a new decryption method. As the empire hadn't had any success, Jack decided that the past was the best place to look for the answer.

That left the question of how far back to go. It would have to be far enough back that the empire wouldn't consider it, but he also wouldn't be able to use anything too old with the modern technology available on the ship. The option most likely to find something would probably be to start with the oldest method that he could still run and work his way forward from there.

All Navy ships could simulate a quantum computer, but binary simulations were considered primitive enough that they weren't included. Jack could write one, but that would take too long.

Quantum computers first saw widespread use in the late twenty-first century, so Jack decided that that was where he would begin his search. The good news was that encryption was quite a popular subject during the beginnings of quantum computing. The bad news was that there were thousands of different algorithms, and only one, if any, would work for what Jack wanted to do.

Jack mentally compiled a list of the ten most likely audio-based encryption programs and got to work. As expected, the first thing that Jack tried produced only static, but his ears drooped slightly anyway. The second, third, and fourth options also produced only static. The fifth option produced a low whine, while the sixth and seventh produced more static. The eighth algorithm, however, produced nothing. Jack was going to mark it as another failure when he realized what the algorithm had just done. It had taken a mishmash of seemingly random values and converted it into a steady, flat line.

Knowing this, Jack set that algorithm to continue running as a continued checking the rest of his list. Both the ninth and tenth programs produced static. Mildly disappointed, Jack went back to the eighth. Still nothing. It was possible that there simply weren't any transmissions right now, and that the Resistance kept silence encrypted as well, just to throw the Empire off. That seemed to be a reasonable explanation, so Jack decided to try it. Jack recorded a simple test message and reversed the decryption process. Comparing the original files that he had discovered the silence to his newly encrypted file, he frowned. The patterns weren't the same. Granted the silence could've caused the difference, but that was unlikely.

When Jack tried to decrypt his own message, he got more silence. The algorithm was broken.

However, Jack wasn't about to give up. Thinking back to when he first thought that the algorithm might work, he realized that there was another possibility. The fifth algorithm had also been able to create order from chaos, except instead of a flat line, it had created a sine wave. Thinking back, Jack realized that he should have noticed that on the spot, and now he felt mildly like an idiot. There was nothing that he could do about the past, so he got back to work.

Checking the 5th algorithm again, Jack surprised to hear not a whine, but a voice.

Self-pride had always made Jack feel like a bit of a prick, but he couldn't help but let a large grin claim his face as he realized that he had single-handedly broken through a code that an entire empire hadn't been able to crack for who knows how long.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** completely separate from my story, but I've started beta reading on a few of my favorite Zootfics by other author's. Notably AnsemD's Two of a Kind (my favorite post-canon story), and something else that I'm not sure if I'm allowed to actually talk about (but it has me ridiculously excited. I actually went into full on Clawhauser-talking-about-Gazelle mode when the author replied to my reaching out). I really enjoy working with other people from this amazing fandom. If anybody either wants to help with this story or wants some help with their own, then I'm totally down for it.

Aside from that, I, like all authors, have an insatiable thirst for feedback. Comments, Kudos, and all that jazz are greatly appreciated. The future of this story isn't yet set in stone, so who knows? Maybe one of your predictions will inspire me enough for it to actually happen.

(I'm adding this a few days later)

The Writer's Box discord kind of died, so I made another, larger group focused server. If you are writing, want to write, or want to help others write a Zootopia fanfiction, consider checking it out. /xRXwvxu

Also, I got permission to talk about the other thing. ADeadMissionary's Electric Eldritch Eidolon is coming back! for those of you who don't know what that is, it's really good Sci-Fi AU that went into hiatus over a year ago. A bit dark, but still great. just don't let the summary scare you away.


	8. Storytime III

"... And then I came up with a plan."

Judy waited for Jack to elaborate, but he didn't. He just stood there, his paws clasped in a position that was probably supposed to look dramatic. "And… what was the plan?"

"For the sake of the story, I'm gonna let Nick tell you what happened from his perspective. It's so much more fun that way."

Judy stared incredulously for a moment and was about to yell at Jack, but at the last moment she took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "I get that you like a good story, but really? Can't you just say the plan?"

Jack replied with a simple "No."

"Why not?!"

"For the sake of the story."

"It's just a story for goddamn sake! Nick, tell me what his plan was!"

Nick looked at the fuming bunny for a few moments before replying. "Watching this is actually quite entertaining. Plus, the story really is a lot more interesting this way, so I'm going to comply with Savage here and continue the story."

Judy paused. "Savage? Where did that come from?"

"Well do you want to hear the story or not?" Nick asked.

"...Fine. continue with your damn story."

"Alright. So, when we received Jack's distress signal..."

On the bridge of his ship, Nick was experiencing something that he hadn't experienced in ages: boredom. Boredom is rare when you are in command of a warship; even a small one, like Nick's. Always having something that he had to manage, think about, or otherwise attend to was tiring.

Turning the feeling around in his head, Nick decided that he liked it. A few minutes later, he changed his mind. Being bored was awful. He didn't want to leave his chair in case something did happen, but there wasn't anything to do! Maybe he could annoy Finnick? But chances were that Finnick was just as bored as he was, and any pestering would be better than the boredom, so that wouldn't work. Maybe he could...

Nick's thought process was interrupted by a small beep and an icon showing up on the dashboard. "Thank God," Nick huffed under his breath. He tapped the icon, bringing up a message.

_We just received a distress signal from near your location. It's on resistance frequencies, but the signal is originating from a Navy ship. Due to the obviously sketchy nature of this signal, We're going to need some more information before we can decide what to do. Go see what you can find out, but be careful._

Nick passed on the order to the rest of his command crew before turning on the PA system. "I've got good news and bad news. Good news is that we actually have something to do. Bad news is that that something is work. Get to your stations, everybody. I'll brief you on the exact nature of this mission once we're in hyperspace." Turning to his pilot, he asked the sloth if the ship was ready for Hyperspace.

"All… set… Captain…"

"Make the jump and start up the Horning on my count." Feeling the small jolt in his stomach from the hyperspace jump, Nick turned the PA back on and continued, "Brace for acceleration in five… four… three… two… one…"

Like usual, Nick was pressed back into his seat and he had to focus on maintaining his breathing, but something felt off. He couldn't tell what it was, but something definitely wasn't right. He waited for the ship to stop accelerating so that he could question the rest of his crew. "Did… did any of you feel that?"

Honey, Nick's Badger second in command, spoke up first. "Yeah… but what was 'it'?"

Almost instantly, Finnick replied: "Aliens." His straight face lasted all of four seconds before he burst out laughing.

After a few seconds, Nick joined him.

"Who here thinks that our boss is a child?" Honey asked with one arm raised.

All of the mammals, including Nick, raised their hands as well.

"But seriously though, what was that?"

"Let me check something… Huh. The instruments say that we were accelerating slower, but it took the same amount of time to reach top speed as it usually does…" Nick's navigator, an echidna by the name of Arnold replied.

"Do you know that the instruments are right?"

"They haven't been wrong before… and come to think of it, it didn't feel like I was being pushed back into my chair quite as hard, so maybe we were accelerating slower… but that still doesn't explain how we're going top speed after the same amount of time."

"Maybe this has something to do with the weird signal?"

"That's as good a guess as any, and that's where we're going, so we might just find out."

The crew continued discussing possible explanations for the remainder of the trip, though they didn't come up with anything better than the first two possibilities that were suggested. Nick still couldn't believe that they were legitimately considering aliens.

The crew felt the odd reduction of force again when they slowed down after exiting hyperspace a good 50,000 miles away from their target, but this time they were too focused on the mission at hand to mention it more than in passing.

"What can you see, Arnold?" Nick asked his navigator.

"It looks like a fairly standard Navy vessel from here. I'd say it probably has a crew of about 130, it almost definitely outguns us, but we could probably drive circles around it otherwise."

"Any information that might give us a clue about the signal?"

"No… Their transmitter is completely offline… Which is odd because they wouldn't be able to detect anything that isn't sending signals of its own… why would they do that?"

"I don't know… can they read our signals?"

"I shouldn't think so… our scans should just be seen as background radiation, so they probably don't even know we're here."

"That's probably the first thing that anyone has said in the last 20 minutes that makes even the slightest bit of sense. Flash, can you bring us closer?"

"How… much… closer… would you… like to… go… captain…?"

"Just outside visual range."

At that moment, Finnick walked back onto the bridge after checking on the Horning to try to see if he could figure out what happened.

"Damn, Nick, you sure you want to get that close?"

"They can't see us, so there isn't a reason not to, as far as I can tell."

"What do you mean they can't see us? They have sensors, right?"

"Their transmitter is offline, so no, not really."

"Why would their transmitter be offline?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out."

"Why don't we ask 'em?" Finnick joked.

Honey took the bait and stated the obvious. "Because it's a _Navy Ship_, and it's big enough that if it knew that we were here it could blow us into a billion pieces!"

"Wait a second…" Nick said before thinking for one second. "I have an idea. Arnold, hail them, but audio only, no video… What are you all staring at me for? Get on it!"

"Um… are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure, now get on it!"

"But it's suicidal!"

"I have a plan!"

The two of them were too busy arguing to notice the sloth getting out of the pilot seat and walking towards the navigator's console. "Shut up… everyone…, Nick… you're… up…" He said before pressing the button to start the call. Flash winked at nick and held his claw up to his lips to keep everyone else quiet.

Nick spoke into the comms in a voice that could very easily have been mistaken for a sheep's, "Hello, unidentified Navy vessel. I notice that your transmitter is offline. What's the situation?"

It was a few seconds before the other ship's transmitter was turned on and a very stressed voice started to reply, "Who are y-" when there was a brief moment of static before a new voice continued.

"The situation is that these stooges kidnapped me, and then I hacked their ship. Once they realized that their transmitter was broadcasting encrypted messages on resistance frequencies, they shut it off. They'll probably turn it off again in a few minutes once they realize that I'm talking to you, but if you destroy the little box next to the transmitter, they won't be able to do that."

Nick was dumbstruck. "What?"

"The only way that you would've found these coordinates is in the encrypted message, and only the resistance can decrypt the message, so you're from the Resistance. Now destroy that box."

"... but the shields-"

"Are down. Now get on with it."

By this point, Nick had more-or-less recovered from the confusion and turned to his crew. "You heard the mammal, get on with it."

The crew went about their tasks without complaint, probably only because they were all still too shocked to engage that part of their brain. It only took about 20 seconds for the cannon to be prepared and the shot fired, and Nick watched the small explosion as the regulator that their contact had indicated flew off into space. It was time to get some more answers. "So now that we can talk without the prospect of being interrupted, who are you?"

"My name is Jackson Pine, and I was the chief engineer on the Navy ship _Sunstrike_ before I got kidnapped."

"How did you know how to contact the resistance?"

"I broke the encryption."

"How? The Sons' have been trying to do that for ages and haven't gotten close!"

"The Sons' are dumb enough to kidnap scientist to force them to perform research on unwilling subjects. Is anyone dumb enough to do that going to be smart enough to crack a heavily encrypted message?"

"...Good point… We may as well bring you onboard. Can you keep the crew on there busy while we send a boarding party?"

"Easier done than said."

"Wha… never mind."

"The extraction went incredibly smoothly. We only ran into a few of their crew, but they all ran away as soon as they saw us; I never even asked what Jack did to them. He couldn't keep control of the ship after he left his spot, so he had us come as close as we could before leaving it. We expected to be attacked now that Jack wasn't managing things, but we didn't even see any of the crew. There was some deliberation about what to do about the other Ship, but in the end we just left it there. There wasn't much risk of them coming after us, because to do that they would have to explain why, and that would involve them explaining their little operation." Nick appeared to be satisfied with his telling of the story, so Judy asked a question.

"And where does the name 'savage' come into this?"

"A little rabbit pretty much single-handedly brought down an entire spaceship with a crew of over 100 mammals and then acted like it was just any other day. Sounds pretty savage to me."

"I… I can't argue with that, but… Jack, doesn't that bother you?"

"Not particularly, but even if it did, he'd still call me that. Once he picks a nickname, you're stuck with it."

The grin permanently plastered to Nick's face widened slightly. "That's right, Carrots."

"Don't call me Carrots."

"Whatever you say, Carrots."

"You… never mind."

The stories shared gave Judy a lot to think about. She knew that she _should_ be trying to escape, but the prospect of going back to the Navy didn't hold very much appeal to her anymore. Everything that she had been told pointed towards rebellions being evil and destructive, but these mammals seemed to be the opposite. What should she do? Did she even have a choice about what she would do? Things might be clearer after a good night's rest. "I… need some time to absorb everything. I'm going to go to bed and try to figure out what the hell I should be thinking in the morning. Goodnight."

Judy walked out of the room and turned to the right. Nick, watching her leave, called out. "Cells are the other way!" In a slightly quieter voice, he addressed the Wolf outside the door. "Alex, make sure she doesn't get lost on the way to the cells.

After a somewhat embarrassed looking Judy passed the door again, Nick turned back to Jack and asked the question that he had wanted answered since first walking into this room. "Now that she's gone, what was the thing that was supposed to 'boost our chances of winning by two hundred percent', again?"

"That is something that is best discussed with Judy present."

"You just let her leave." Nick deadpanned. "Do you have any idea how infuriating you are?"

"Yes, I am aware that I am not always the easiest mammal to work with."

"Goddamnit, Savage."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** That should be the last of the flashback chapters, at least for now. I emphasize 'should' because not even I usually know what's coming next. However, what comes next should come sooner than a lot of the other chapters, mostly because of the Zootopian Authors Association Discord server. It's up to thirty authors so far, and I'm still looking for it to grow. If anyone is writing a Zootfic, or would like to write a Zootfic, leave a comment and I will gladly give you an invite.

Apart from all that, I would like to thank Ansem for beta reading this chapter and suggesting the title, as well as everyone else in the ZAA who gave me feedback while I was working on it.

If you are enjoying this story, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review or give a follow/favorite (preferably both, but that's really up to you). Whenever I get an email from saying that someone has done any of those things, it puts a smile on my face. Whenever I get a comment, I take it into account. If it's negative, I'll make sure to think about it while writing future chapters so I don't make the same mistakes. If it's positive, great! people are enjoying my story and it motivates me to write more. If it's a question, I'll answer it. What I'm trying to say is that yes, your opinion matters to me. I care about my readers (as much as I can care about random internet people that I've never met), and enjoy interacting with you, even if that interaction is as simple as getting an email that says "You've got Kudos!" Please leave your feedback, no matter what it is.


	9. Since When Does Anything Make Sense?

Judy woke up feeling... refreshed. That was one thing that was nice about being captured. She didn't have to wake up early to manage her ship. The issue was that someone else was managing her ship.

...That should've bothered her more than it did. _Her_ ship was being controlled by _someone else_. Someone who had taken her prisoner. She should hate it, but she couldn't bring herself to care as much as she knew she should. Nick seemed like a decent enough fellow.

That thought also should have bothered her. It certainly would've bothered two-year-ago her. She should probably get up. Thinking about that, interesting as it was, wouldn't help her with... what? At the helm of a ship she always had something to do, and not having anything to do was bugging her. It seemed that everything that should bug her wasn't and everything that she should be elated for was.

Abandoning those circular thoughts, Judy needed something to do. The hall that her cell was in looked the same as it had before she went to sleep, but there was a different guard this time. Instead of the wolf, Alex, she remembered, there was a lion. "How long was I asleep for? That was probably one of the better nights sleep I've had in a while." Judy asked the first question that came to her mind.

Before either one of her fellow prisoners or the lion could answer, Jack's voice came over the PA. "Nick wanted you to come back to my office once you were awake."

"O-kay...? I'd still like to know the answer to my question, though."

"You were asleep for nine hours and 43 minutes. Do you remember the way to my office?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I do..." Judy waited for the lion to unlock her cell and escort her there, but he didn't move. "Is... is someone going to open my cell?"

"It's already unlocked."

Judy creased her brows but didn't question it further. She must be becoming immune to all the weirdness over the past two days. That couldn't be right; it felt like so much longer. But no, it was actually only two days.

She opened the door to her cell, cautiously watching the lion, who in turn watched her. It seemed that not everyone on the ship trusted her to just walk around, which was really to be expected. If she was going by what was to be expected, then she wouldn't be out of her cell at all.

After leaving the cell block she made her way to Jack's office. She was watched closely by everyone she encountered, but she was never stopped. Evidently, there had been some kind of message that Nick had sent to his crew alerting them that she would be coming through.

She arrived at the same door as yesterday and reached towards the door like Nick had done yesterday. Was it actually yesterday? Standard time had little meaning in space. The door opened to reveal Nick and Jack waiting for her. There was a table that wasn't there before with a few chairs around it. Jack was seated in one of them but Nick had apparently deigned to remain standing.

"You wanted me?"

It was Nick who responded. "Yes. Remember that thing that Savage said about 'increasing our chance of winning by 200 percent? When I asked about it yesterday after you left, he said that he wouldn't tell me without you here."

"That... sounds like Jack. So you want me to be here so you can discuss something that might not even matter to me- who am I kidding. Of course it matters to me. this is Jack we're talking about."

Jack responded this time with a curt "yes." before beginning his explanation. "From the files that I hacked on the _Borealis_, the ship that captured me, there was one instance of a pair of powered mammals with a unique trait. They had some sort of mental linking, extraordinarily similar to what you, Judy, have been experiencing with Nick."

"Absolutely. I can totally read Judy's mind. As a matter of fact, she's thinking about a potato and banana salad right now."

"What?"

"My point is that it's completely ridiculous; it doesn't make any sense."

Judy looked at nick with her head slightly tilted before asking "since when does anything make sense?"

"...You have a point there, but I still need more of an explanation."

They both looked back towards Jack, ready for him to continue. "In addition to the linking, there's also the 'reduced acceleration' from your story, which you neglected to mention before. That sounds like an inertial dampener, and while those are impossible to build, they seem to be within the realm of possibility of the powers."

"Hold up... You think that someone on my ship has the power to, what? Be an 'inertial dampener'?"

"More specifically, I think that it is you."

"That's even more outlandish than Carrots here being able to read my mind."

Judy looked back at Nick. "Jack has a track record of being right. I can't really wrap my head around everything that's been happening lately, but I'd trust him on this."

"Alright. let's assume, for a second, that I do have this power. Why hasn't anything happened since then? And how does this have anything to do with the 'mental linking'?"

"To answer your first question, I believe that the situation was unique. You were going into something that you had no idea what to expect. Have you been in a similar scenario since then?"

"Of course I have. What about when we captured the _Sunstrike_?"

"In that situation, you were the one in control. You staged the signal, you knew she was coming. There wasn't a big unknown."

"Ok. What about when... damn it, that's it. Let's assume it was a unique situation. What about the mental thing?"

"The pair of mammals, both gnu's, though I believe that to be irrelevant, had powers. I suspect that both you and Judy have powers."

Judy broke in before Nick could argue more, as that was obviously what he was about to do. "That makes sense. I don't understand it fully, but it checks pretty much all of the boxes." Nick was about to aim his tongue at her instead of Jack, but Judy started talking again. "Think about it. Do you have any real arguments other than 'That's preposterous, I can't have superpowers!'?"

"I... Well..." Nick looked like he couldn't decide whether to deflate with disappointment or explode with excitement. "...No."

Judy turned back towards Jack. "So we've established that we have superpowers and some sort of mental link. How does this help you? We don't even know how to control our powers, I don't know what mine is, and I'm not even part of the Resistance."

"How long will you 'not be a part of the resistance'?"

Nick voiced his opinion before Judy had a chance to even think about reacting to what Jack said. "Jack! You're supposed to at the very least mention that kind of thing to me before you suggest it to her!"

"Do you have anything against her joining?"

"She's a _Navy captain_! Of course I have reservations!"

"She's a very unique Navy captain."

"Look, you can't just say that, no matter how well you think you know her."

"I know that I know her well enough to say that."

"I... Damnit, Savage. Why doesn't common sense work against you?"

"Because common sense is what mammals think before thinking about things. 90 percent of the time it's right, and 99 percent of the time it's not wrong, but occasionally it is a direct result of lack of thought."

"...I want to deny that, but with its subject being thought, you're forcing me to think before doing that, and now I can't deny it."

"Are you still concerned about Judy's joining?"

"Not specifically about that, but you still need to talk about that kind of thing."

Judy found her moment to slip a word in edgewise and did so. "Jack, he's right. I know that you think things through and that what you suggest is usually what we go with, but mammals like being kept in the loop."

"I will keep that in mind for next time," Jack said with zero apparent intent to do so.

Nick considered attempting to drill the message into Jack's unique mind, but decided that it wouldn't be worth the effort, so he got back to the topic at hand. "Back to what Carrots said, how does this help us?"

"Based on the research notes that I hacked, it will not be too difficult to learn to control your powers. If your power truly is being a living inertial dampener, then we will be able to do the most complex and intense maneuvers possible and not feel it at all inside of the ship. I'm sure that that will excite Flash, and I believe that Samantha shares her cousin's fearless nature."

"So that's how they knew each other..." Judy said with a contemplative look on her face.

"We don't need to think about that right now. Let's get back to the topic at hand." Nick's attempt to steer the conversation back on track was successful, but not in the exact way that he intended.

"When you say 'We,' are you saying that because it is a common phrase, or are you saying it because you were both thinking it?" Jack asked, throwing a wrench into Nick's thought process for the… he couldn't even remember how many times it had happened anymore.

"I… meant it as a common saying, but… I was thinking about that too. It's the obvious thought, though! It doesn't mean that our brains were… linked… when it happened." Nick said it in a defensive manner even though it wasn't something that needed defending.

"I have some suspicions about how the linking works, or at least how to control it, but I need some more information before I can confirm them. Judy, can you tell me about all of the times that it happened?"

Judy decided not to mention the dreams because that felt a little bit personal even if this could explain it. Instead, she opted to start with the broken console. "When Nick was trying to get onto the bridge to capture us, the console outside the door was broken. We were all trying to figure out why Nick had broken it, and then I just… knew that he hadn't; it was already broken."

"And then there was the time in the cell blocks. Was there anything else?"

"When you said that your story was 'only four and a half hours, I've timed it' I could have sworn that Nick and I both said 'Of course you have' under our breaths at the same time. I'm not sure if that means anything, though."

"That helps. How about you, Nick?"

"I haven't had any experiences like that. Even during the times that Judy mentioned, my brain felt pretty normal to me. Why does she get to have all the fun?"

"I believe that you have been affected, just as much as Judy has. Judy has received primarily conscious thoughts, but I have noticed that the two of you are getting along much better than a captive and capturer normally would. As for why Judy has received the thoughts, You have always been the one with the knowledge."

"So?"

"Each time that it has happened, you were already thinking about the same thing. The first time it was the console, which you knew about but she didn't, and the second it was dilemmas, where there wasn't any information exchanged. So if you both think about something and only Judy knows the answer, you should gain the knowledge. I'm going to tell Judy something, and then I want both of you to think about what I told her."

Jack leaned into Judy's ear and whispered. Judy nodded in response. "Now Nick, tell me a number between 0 and 4078."

"That's an oddly specific number. I'll go with... one half."

Judy's eyes widened and Jack smiled to himself. "That was the number that I told Judy."

Nick grinned in excitement, but that grin soon became mischievous. After a few seconds, it turned to disappointment. "Why isn't it working?"

"If you're trying to read Judy's mind again, then it's because it only works when you're thinking about the same thing, and it's unlikely that someone will be thinking about the exact thing that you want to know about when you want to know it."

Judy caught on to what Nick was trying to do. At first, she was a bit angry, but then she got a better idea. "What's your most embarrassing secret?" After going through a mix of different facial expressions, She finally settled on laughter.

Nick was confused for a few seconds, but that confusion was quickly replaced by mortification, then smugness. "What's _your_ most embarrassing secret?" Nick's smugness only increased when Judy's face fell. "It's called a hustle, Sweetheart."

"If you don't tell anyone mine, I won't say yours." She deadpanned.

"Deal."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I told you that I was writing faster than ever! As a matter of fact, this chapter was pretty much done 2 days after posting the last one, so I _think_ that I'll be able to start posting weekly. Again, I only think that. I don't want to make promises I can't keep.

Aside from all that, I'd like to thank Ansem, CommanderAIK, and N. for looking over this chapter. I actually came up with my own title this time. Yay!

And now it's time for - you know it - me to beg you for kudos and comments! Really, though. It matters.

As you all probably know by now, because I mention it in every single authors note that I write, I have a discord server for Zootopian Authors. The goal is to raise peoples skill, self-esteem, and productivity in a fun, helpful environment. I do hope that any authors reading this will join.

Also, just a fun fact, but literally over 65% of the words in this chapter are dialogue.


	10. Gettin' the Gang Together

**Author's Note:** As You may have noticed, this story has a new title. It used to be called "Sons of Sol", but that's the name of the evil government, so I changed it to "Under the Sons'".

* * *

The spacecraft was fairly large for having a crew of five. It was large enough to easily hold 15 medium-sized mammals, but looks can be deceiving. As it happened, the size of the crew was not the only thing that wasn't as it appeared about this ship. Not by a long-shot.

There were two mammals currently in the room that stood at the heart of the ship. One was a grizzly bear, and the other was a tiger. After a few minutes of silence, the bear spoke. "I hate it when he does this. He says 'be there by five', or 'you had better not be late', and then he doesn't arrive for twenty minutes!"

"Patience, Gregor." The tigresses voice was completely even, as always.

"I mean, how are you not bored? At least throw some darts or something."

"Patience is a virtue."

"Well yeah, but that doesn't mean that you can't have some fun while being patient."

"I've never particularly enjoyed playing darts. There's no real challenge."

"That's cause you never make it challenging. Have a few beers and You'll be having plenty of fun."

"I don't drink."

"I don't even know why I try anymore, Kari."

"Neither do I."

The silence that had enveloped the room returned once again, broken only by the semi-frequent 'thud' of a dart hitting a board. After a few minutes of this, the door at the top of the sturdy wooden staircase opened revealing three other mammals.

"Finally. What took you so long, John?" The bear, Gregor, addressed one of the two wolves that had entered.

"You know that I always make sure to look my best while discussing business, Greg."

"So your dress sense extends to your friends, but not your sense of time? We're always on time when we're meeting a client."

"That's different."

"And dressing up isn't?"

Tired of listening to the two fight, one of the three mammals that had just entered, a weasel, interrupted. "All right, you two. You have this discussion every time. Let's get on with the meeting."

"Chris is correct. We should start," Kari added.

The mammals all took their usual seats around a worn poker table that stood in the corner of the room. The weasel, Chris, spoke first. "So, how are we going to go about this?"

"As things stand right now, it won't be easy. That sheep wants us to help a small force beat the entire Navy. That won't work. I was thinking that we could even the playing field a little bit." John, The evident leader of the group said with a smug grin.

"Are you saying that we shrink the Navy or grow the resistance?" The other wolf, who's name was Eliot, gave his first contribution to the conversation.

"How about both?"

"You have my attention now! What's the plan?" Gregor always got excited whenever something big was suggested.

"I've heard that the leader of one of the Navy's divisions has a bit of a conscience on him." John's grin became conspiratorial.

Kari was the first one to figure out what the wolf meant. "I see what you're planning. I approve, but Gregor will probably be disappointed."

"Wait, why would I be disappointed?"

"There won't be any action, we're just going to pull some strings." Chris filled Gregor in on the subtext of the conversation.

"Oh c'mon! This is our first big mission in months and we're going about it this way!?" I've been itching for some action for ages!"

"And you'll get some, but first we need to level the playing field, and this is our best option to do that. Does anyone else have any complaints?" The wolf looked at each other mammal at the table before moving on. "That's the beginning of the plan. Now we just need to figure out exactly how we're going to put it into action."

"Ha! 'Action'."

Gregor's remark went ignored and Chris made the first real reply. "I assume that we'd just tell Commander Bogo about a few of the more unsavory things going on in the Sons' and get him in contact with the resistance."

"That's the base of the plan, yes, but we still need to figure out how to do that in a way that he'll actually believe us."

"That, and we need to make sure that the Resistance will accept his help," Elliot added.

* * *

Judy stayed in the workshop with Nick and Jack for a few more hours discussing the ramifications of their unique traits before she retired to her cell to absorb the information more fully and discuss it with her crew.

When she arrived at the cell block, she didn't go to her own cell, she went to Nathan and Lannia's instead. She was small enough to simply slip through the bars, and did so, much to the surprise of the cells intended inhabitants.

The lion who was guarding them was obviously uncomfortable with this. "I'm going to need to ask you to go back to your own cell."

Judy looked up in thought for a few moments before answering. "Nick says it's OK." Among the things discussed in Jack's workshop was a way for them to connect at any time they wanted. The plan was that they would each have a specific word that they would always keep in mind, and whenever one wanted to communicate with the other, they'd think of the other mammal's word. Nick, being Nick, had insisted that Judy's word would be 'Carrot' and his would be 'Blueberry'.

Of course, nobody else knew about it. "I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm going to verify that with the captain." Judy grinned.

"No need, Victor."

"Wh-… Wait, how do you know my name?" The alarm was clear in his voice.

"I asked Nick."

"What did you even do out there? Ask him about the entire crew?"

"I didn't ask a single question about his crew during our meeting."

"Then what did you do?" This time the question was asked by Lannia, with Nathan just watching from the sidelines.

"I learned a few things." Judy's grin remained.

Lannia waited for her to elaborate, but nothing ever came. "What did you learn, Judy? If you don't tell me I'll tell 'Victor' over there about your graduation."

Judy expected Victor to say something, but he didn't. He was evidently curious as well, about either option.

Judy's grin immediately fell. "Fine. I'm not letting anyone else on this ship get anywhere near that."

"Hold up, anyone _else_!?"

"...yeah…"

"The rest can wait, I want to hear about that!"

"It'll only make sense in context with the rest."

"Then tell me the rest first, but I'm hearing that story."

Judy agreed to the plan and began to tell her tale. Lannia, and occasionally Nathan, asked questions, but the telling went relatively unimpeded until Judy got to the part about the existence of superpowers. Judy had to answer a whole host of questions, most of which she could only deflect, saying "You'll have to ask Jack about that later." Before anyone knew it, she was almost done retelling what she had learned on her first day at Jack's workshop.

"...But the Sons' hadn't been able to crack the encryption on Resistance communications. Jack, of course, figured it out, and sent them a distress signal, an SOS about the SOS, if you will"

"Really? A pun?"

"Yup. Nick's been rubbing off on me, more on that later. Anyway, Nick received the distress signal and rescued Jack, with relative ease because Jack had practically disabled the whole ship before he even got there. That's why Nick has been calling him 'Savage'."

"That's all useful information, but it's still not what I wanted to know."

"That all happened today. Long story short, Nick has powers, and I'm supposed to have some as well, but they haven't manifested yet."

"Really!? That is so freaking awesome! What are they!?"

"Nick is an inertial dampener, and we don't know mine yet, but there's more. My brain is 'linked' with Nick's."

Nathan had minored in psychology, so if anything caught his interest, it would be this. "Could you please elaborate?"

"It's kind of like, no it _is_ telepathy. We can communicate with our minds. Nick says 'hi', and is attempting to get me to tell you a very bad joke, by the way."

"That sounds weird… I'm not sure that I would like that."

"It's not really that bad. If we're both thinking about the same thing, then both of us get any knowledge about it that the other has about it. It's how I knew that Nick didn't break the console to the bridge door; we were both thinking about why it was broken."

"And so Nick… what, tricked you into thinking about something embarrassing?"

"Exactly, but I did it to him first."

Lannia laughed. "I didn't think you had it in you, you manipulative little demon!"

"That's another thing actually. For conscious thoughts, the linking is basically just telepathy, but there are also a few subconscious effects. Namely, we become slightly more similar to each other and generally get along better."

"So your own brain is not your own?"

"Well… sort of, I suppose. But as far as Jack knows, the effects should only be slight."

Judy's sharp hearing picked up on Victor mumbling something along the lines of "Don't think I could handle two Nicks" under his breath.

After a few moments of silence while everyone let the new information sink in, Nathan spoke up. "This is great and all, but what does it mean for us?"

"I was thinking that we should join the resistance."

"That's… a big proposition."

"Is it any bigger than any of the things that I just told you?"

"No, but you're going to have trouble convincing the crew about this."

"Before I even think about that, I want to know what _your_ opinions on this are. The two of you are my most trusted friends. We went through the academy together, along with Jack."

Lannia was the first to break the ensuing silence. "I'll… I'm with you on this, whatever you decide."

Nathan sighed before replying. "I think we all already know how this goes. I'm going to say that I need some time to think about it, and then in the morning I'll say yes."

"Thank you. I mean it." Judy looked each of them in the eye for a few seconds as she said it.

Nathan, as always the voice of reason, was the first person to break the moment. "Alright, so how are you going to tell the crew?"

"I'm not sure yet. Telling them with some kind of mass announcement won't work, I know that much. I'll probably have to talk to them each one at a time."

"That'd probably be best. Do you want us to be with you while you do it?"

"Yes. Thank you… Come to think of it I should probably ask Nick and Jack to be there as well."

"I can't say too much about Nick, but are you sure that you want Jack to be there? I'm sure that the crew will be glad he's alive, but he can be a bit… blunt sometimes," Nathan said.

"...yeah, you're right. I suppose that Nick might not be the best either; he makes a lot of… jokes of questionable quality. Though that might actually be a good thing, come to think about it."

"So me, you, Nathan, and Nick are going to head back over to the _sunstrike_ to talk to the crew… tomorrow?" Lannia asked the last thing that needed clarification.

Judy waited a few moments before answering. "Yeah. Nick agrees with the plan."

"How… Oh yeah, telepathy. It's going to take me a while to get used to that."

* * *

**Author's Note:** This chapter is a little bit later than I had hoped it would be, but I have a legitimate excuse. I was on vacation from Thursday through Sunday, and school started up after summer on Monday, so I haven't really had a break. But I finished it, got it beta read (Thanks, Ansem), and all that stuff, so here it is: Chapter 10, my first real milestone. I'm hoping that this chapter will bring me to my second milestone of 1000 hits. Seeing as you already will have given this chapter a hit if you're reading it, I can't really beg you for them, but I would appreciate it if you would give this story a favorite and/or a follow.

Once again, I'll advertise the Zootopian Author's Association Discord server, which has over 30 authors now, a few of which have stories longer than 100k words. Without it I'd probably only be on chapter 8 or 9. If you're interested in joining, leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you within 16 hours. Or if your comment is about something else, I'll still reply within the 16 hours.

Apart from that, what do you think about the Villains that I'm finally getting around to introducing? I'm sort of basing them off of the villains from WriteAnon's Water Under the Bridge.


	11. Things are Getting Serious

Judy couldn't help but reflect on exactly how strange her current situation was as she stepped back into her ship for the first time after being captured. While being friends with your boss wasn't exactly a common occurrence, it certainly happened more often than deserting to work with arguably your boss's worst enemy.

Beside her walked Nick, With Nathan, Lannia, and Alex Wolford, who Nick had introduced more properly when he decided to bring him along, in tow. Flash remained in the shuttle that he had driven everyone to the _Sunstrike_ in.

Lannia, always the planner, made sure that she had everything straight in her mind. "So, Alex and I are going to go to each mammal's cabin and bring them to Nathan's office, right?"

In addition to being large enough to hold the megafauna crew members, Nathan's office had a generally more relaxing, less business-oriented atmosphere, which might be required with the number of bombshells that they were going to drop on the crew.

"That's the plan, yes," Nick replied.

Alex understood the what of the plan, but not the why. "I'm not complaining, but I still don't understand why you're bringing me. Wouldn't the crew be more comfortable with fewer predators around?"

Following Nick's lead, Judy responded to the member of the opposite crew. "That might be true, but it will never change unless they're exposed to you. Plus, it's a display of unity."

Alex thought for a moment. "Fair enough."

The group was silent for a few moments before Lannia asked who they would start with.

"I had assumed that we would start with the member of your command crew that wasn't brought to the _Thousand_..." Alex began innocently, but was silenced by the stares of the other four mammals as they arrived at Nathan's office. "No…?"

"Do you know _why_ George wasn't brought on board?"

"I… hadn't thought of that."

"Exactly."

Everyone was silent for a moment longer before Lannia brought the conversation back on track. "So who _will_ we start with?"

"Doing it by room number would probably work well enough. Who's in room 101?"

Nathan, who had already sat in his chair and logged into his console, replied: "That one's empty, but the Oryx-Antlersons are in room 103."

Judy grimaced. "That's… definitely preferable to dealing with George…"

Alex, who hadn't worked with Judy's crew and didn't have the benefit of cerebral linking like Nick did, tried to keep up. "But…?"

Nick's eyes widened as Judy started to reply. "They're not bad mammals, they're actually pretty nice, but… they don't really have much of a… What I'm trying to say is that—"

Lannia cut her off with a smirk. "What miss 'too-nice-for-my-own-good' is trying to say is that they're loud."

"It can't be that ba—"

"The other three rooms on deck one are empty."

"—It's that bad." Alex finished after Lannia's interruption.

By this point, Nick was grinning. "I _hate_ to break up this conversation, but don't you two have a rock concert to go to?"

[break]

Nick had to keep his ears from folding back a little as he glanced towards the other captain, her professional mask, like his, firmly in place. He could hear the Oryx-Antersons coming down the hall from here, and didn't even want to imagine what it would be like for Judy with her sensitive lapine hearing once they arrived.

_Don't worry, you won't have to imagine it!_ The sing-song, mocking way in which Judy 'said' it was transmitted perfectly through the thought.

_Why did you have to put that into my mind!? I could have remained blissfully ignorant if I just hadn't thought about it!_ Try as he might, Nick couldn't find the smallest sliver of regret coming from Judy's mind.

As the voices not-so-slowly increased in volume, Nathan sent Judy a sympathetic glance as well.

When the door finally opened, even Nick had to wince. Yet somehow, Judy's face remained straight and her ears upright.

"Hey Captain! Tell us stuff!"

_Tel—_

"Pronk! She's the captain, be nicer than that!"

_Thinki—_

"Shut up, Bucky!"

_This i—_

"No, you shut up!"

_I ha—_

"You shut up!"

_Tha—_

The shouting match somehow continued to elevate beyond its already intense beginning until Lannia started rapidly flipping the light switch on and off. "Both of you shut up!"

_...Those are the first mammals I have ever met who could— Excuse me, those are the second mammals I have ever met who could interrupt thoughts._

Nick was severely out of his depth. Skills were something that you slowly honed, unlike knowledge which was something that could be gained in a matter of minutes, so he couldn't learn how to deal with the two loud ungulates from Judy. That wouldn't stop him from trying, though. _How do you survive these two?_

_Get a pair of earplugs._

_Ha ha, very funny. How do _you _survive these two?_

_I got a pair of earplugs. Your ears are less sensitive than mine._

Nick's entire brain stopped working. Judy had been using his ears the entire time!? He knew that the linking could be useful, but _this_? How the hell had she even done it? Senses weren't knowledge!

_I'm not actually hearing what you're hearing. I'm getting the words that you hear, but not actually the sounds. Now could you please focus? I can't hear while your brain is that blank._

_...Um, sorry, can't think yet…_

_Yes you can! Quit delaying!_

The entire exchange only took a few seconds. However, it only takes a few seconds for mammals to notice an odd detached look on a rabbits face. By the time Judy got back to the present, She was the target of everyone in the miraculously silent room's stare, besides Nick.

"Err… Sorry about that. I suppose you want me to explain everything now?"

"Yeah… What exactly happened, by the way?" Nathan asked.

"I was having a discussion with Nick. Which will make sense after I explain everything else!" She added the second part upon noticing Bucky's mouth starting to open.

The explanation of everything that had happened went far smoother than Judy had expected. The Oryx and Kudu only got into 3 'shut up' loops throughout the entire discussion. Judy hoped that the number wouldn't rise to higher than four when she mentioned that she was planning to join the resistance.

"...Ok, that should be everything. Does anyone have any questions?" Fortunately, nobody did. Judy didn't want to have to steer another tangent back on track. "Good. Now, considering all of that, I've decided that I'm going to join the Resistance, which, need I remind you, is treason."

Everything was silent for two whole seconds before Nick's eardrums felt like they imploded. The Oryx-Antlersons had been loud the entire time, but this was something else. He had no idea what they were saying, and he doubted that anyone else did as well. Somehow, though, the two in question seemed to be able to carry a coherent conversation. _How the fuck do they do that?_

_Just don't question it. I haven't figured it out and I've been working with them for years._

There was so much noise that Nick couldn't tell how much time had passed when the argument, if that's what it even was, finally died down. In the end, the two agreed that it made sense. They were, predictably, nervous about what would happen if the Sons' got to them, but they were on board with the plan, and that was what mattered.

The next few meetings went similarly, though they weren't nearly as loud as the first one was. Each time, Lannia and Alex would go to a room and bring the occupants back to Nathan's office.

By the time they were halfway done, not a single mammal had outright rejected the idea. Surprisingly, three actually seemed excited and jumped at it, including Marsha, who was eager to meet Jack. Plenty had replied that they wanted to sleep on it, but there was nothing wrong with that, either.

"The next room is room 244, which is..." Nathan's voice became apprehensive as he read the name off of the monitor, "George's room."

"Great." Lannia bit her lip in thought. "Can we skip him?"

"...As much as I want to, We should talk to him. If we delay, it'll only get harder," Judy decided

"Fine. let's go, Alex."

"Wait, if he really hates predators as much as you say he does, shouldn't I stay here?"

"Ahh ah ah, mister! You are not getting out of this one! If I have to suffer through this, then so do you." Lannia's tone was light and playful.

Alex chuckled and sat down.

"I'm serious, get over here."

"Wait, really? You're not even going to consider my argument?"

"Already did. George is more likely to come out into a hallway with one predator rather than go into a room with two."

"She's right, go with her, Alex," Nick supported.

Groaning, the wolf stood up and walked back towards the door. "Fine..."

_Why did you tell him to go? I don't think that Lannia's argument was actually valid. Which is odd now that I think about it…_ Speech could never match the clarity with which Nick received Judy's confusion. Not overly intense, but definitely prominent.

Nick's ever-present grin increased slightly. _I've been watching the two of them._ Nick sent Judy a few scenes, including one of Alex wagging his tail, a closeup of Lannia's hoof, and the two of them walking through the door behind an armadillo crew member.

_What is all of this supposed to mean?_

_Alex's tail is wagging a little bit more than usual. Lannia's hoof is angled slightly towards Alex. They've been coming through that door a _little _bit closer together each time._

_That doesn't mean anything, Nick. They've known each other for what, 3 days? And two of those days they were still enemies! Plus, Lannia's not the relationship type._ Judy wasn't really mad, just a bit exasperated. _And even if what you're implying is true, that's not a reason to send Alex out with her again._

_Of course it's a reason! What better reason is there?_

_There isn't one. Alex should've stayed here._

_Where's the fun in tha—_

"Ummm… guys? ...Guys!" The urgency in Nathan's voice brought the two captains out of their minds and back to reality.

"What is it, Nathan?"

Instead of coming from Nathan, the reply came from the door, where an out-of-breath Lannia had evidently just arrived.

"George is gone!"

"Hold up, what happened?"

"We got to his room and he came out, very nervous and abrasive, as expected, but as soon as we mentioned that we were going to see Nick, he darted down a smaller tunnel! It's the one that leads to the escape pods!"

"Fuck." was all that Judy could say.

Nick fared better and was instantly in crisis mode. "Can we shut them down?"

"Maybe Jack could, but they're designed to prevent that so that a boarding party can't shut them off."

"Can we get Jack?"

"That would take too long."

"What can we do?"

"I don't know!"

"What if we notified the rest of the crew about it? Maybe one of them could stop him," Alex suggested.

The resident security officer replied instantly. "I like the idea, but it's too risky."

Judy, having caught up with the conversation, asked: "Can the _Thousand_ do anything?"

"Not without killing George."

"Damnit."

"What about—" Before Nick could finish his thought, the radio linked to Nick's bridge fizzled on.

"An escape pod just ejected from your ship!"

"We know, Arnold!" We're trying to figure out what to do about it!"

"Well you better think fast, because that pod is broadcasting our position to the Sons' right now!"

"Double fuck."

_Don't you mean threesome?_

_NOT THE TIME, NICK!_

_What? I didn't do anything._

_Don't you dare play dumb with me, mister! I can read your thoughts, and I sure as hell didn't think that!_

_But I didn't say anything..._

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I was originally planning to ship Alex with Fangmeyer just like everyone else in the fandom, but what can I say! The characters ran away with the story. Apart from that, I'd like to thank Ansem (again) for beta reading this chapter. I will say that I'm absolutely terrified of writing the next chapter. I'll leave you to ponder what that means.

On a separate note, I was looking through my stats, and only one Australian has clicked on this story. However, that Australian is one of the 15 people to read all 10 of the previous chapters, making Australia the only country with a 100% completion rate, so a shoutout to my Australian reader. Also, Canadians hate my story.

If you don't like those stats, you can change them! Follow, favorite, and review!


	12. That's really anti-climactic, actually

"We could have as little as five minutes to leave before the Navy arrives. We're going to need at the very least a pilot on each bridge. Can Flash get you to your ship and get Samantha back here that fast?" While communication with their minds might have been more efficient for her and Nick, Judy knew that they would have to keep Nathan in the loop.

"With a better shuttle, yeah, but this one isn't fast enough."

"Do you have a backup pilot?"

"Not one as good as Flash, and I'm pretty sure we'll need a damn good pilot to get us out of here fast enough."

"What about Samantha? She's a 'damn good pilot' and she's already on the Thousand. Flash can drive this ship." Lannia was good in crises; it was part of being chief of security.

"That might work, but would Nick's crew trust her?" Judy asked.

"They'll have to. There's not enough time." Nick turned on his radio to talk to the mammals on his ship. "Arnold, get Honey."

"On it!" The armadillo's reply was almost instantaneous.

A few seconds later a gruff female voice came over the radio. "Do you have a plan yet?"

"Yeah. There isn't enough time to get Flash back to the Thousand, and you'll need a good pilot to get out of here fast enough. The sloth in the cells is Judy's ship's pilot. Bring her to the bridge."

"Are you crazy, mammal!"

"Probably, but that's beside the point. She's also Flash's cousin. Get her on the bridge."

"Flash's cou— that can wait. Alright, I'll get her, but only because there isn't enough time to do anything else. And I can't guarantee how the crew will react."

"That's fine. We're going to have Flash control this ship for the time being. We can iron out any wrinkles when we get to them."

Nick turned off his radio to address the group he was currently with. "Alex, go to the shuttle and get Flash. Meet us on the bridge."

Alex began to turn but stopped halfway through. "I... I don't really know how to get to there yet…"

Before anyone else could reply, Lannia offered to go with him.

"Only one of you has to go— ...aaand they're gone." Nick's ears folded back at the second half of his statement.

"We can deal with that later. Now, we need to get to the bridge." Judy was also a bit annoyed but quickly shoved it away to deal with later.

It took the three mammals no more than minute to get from Nathan's office to the helm. When they arrived, Judy and Nathan quickly took their normal seats, with Nick taking one near the back of the room.

"Nathan, hail the Thousand."

"Yes sir." Normally, communications fell to the navigator, the escaped George, so in addition to the stress-fueled fumbling, Nathan also had to fuss with unfamiliar controls. Once Nathan was finished, a large picture of the other bridge was portrayed on a screen to each side of the front window.

"Where to?" The stocky badger sitting next to the command chair was immediately on business.

"We can't head back to HQ and risk being followed, so how about... Kobol?"

"That works. Should I contact HQ?"

"Yes! Why would you even wait for me to tell you that!?"

"Er… Sorry. We're all a bit stressed…"

Apprehensive silence fell over the two crews. Eventually, Judy didn't break it. _You obviously care about your crew, why don't you show it? At least tell them that you're stressed too and that it's alright. _

It took Nick a few moments to digest what Judy had asked, and when he finally did, it struck him hard. Nick did care, he knew that his crew was struggling, and the misstep was completely understandable. He knew that he should acknowledge it, but something always stopped him. Reflexively, he sought an excuse to reinforce his walls. Nick pondered denying that he cared, but he had never been one to cultivate a 'tough guy' appearance. Plus, Judy would see right through it. In the end, he settled on the simplest excuse available to him. _I need to seem strong for my crew. _

Unsurprisingly, now that he thought about it, Judy saw through it anyway. _Cut the crap, Nick. The entire culture of your ship is designed to make it seem more casual. That argument is invalid. _

I… That's a story for another time. Nick continued to deflect.

_Please. _

All it took was one simple word. Judy cared, and she wanted the universe to know. She cared about him. He was a closed-off mammal. He tried to hide it with an extroverted mask, but even Finnick and Honey, who he had been traveling with for years before joining the resistance, hardly knew anything about him. Judy wanted him to open up. She could've used their connection to pry that knowledge from him, but she still waited for him to give it willingly. She had known him for a mere three days, and yet she cared is if she had known him for his entire life. Almost like they were once highschool sweethearts. With that, the mood was broken. _...Aaand now I can't get that image out of my mind. _

_I'm... I'll just go back to my own head now... _

_...Yeah… You do that… _

Nathan had been watching the entire exchange, but without the context of speech, he wasn't sure exactly what to think. He knew that it had started with Judy looking concerned and Nick appearing slightly pained, but what possibly could have caused Judy's ears to get so completely and utterly red? "Wh—"

Before Nathan could finish even his first word, Lannia, Alex, and Flash hanging onto the later's back, burst through the door.

"A… backpack…, I am."

"Movie references? Really? Now?"

"It… is still… better… than what… you… decided… would be… a good… name… for your… ship."

"Hey, at least I call her the Thousand instead of the Falcon."

"So that's why the name sounded familiar…"

"...You're an idiot, Lannia. The Millenium Falcon is probably the best known fictional spaceship of all time, and you didn't get the, in my opinion, too obvious reference until now?" Alex's tail was completely limp and his ears were folded back in what appeared to be genuine appalment. "We're even part of a freaking resistance!"

"Well sorry! I never had time to watch ancient Sci-Fi as a kid."

"You've never even seen it!? We're going to fix that once our lives aren't at risk. And who ever said it was for kids?"

"I might take you up on that." A faint smile managed to force itself through Lannia's stress-induced grimace and onto her face.

_See? They've got a thing for each other. _

_I… As much as I hate to admit it, you might actually be right. _

And why, pray, would you hate to admit it?

Judy had to think for a minute before responding. Why did she hate it? _I… guess it doesn't fit with my personal narrative? _

_How so? _

_Lannia is a pretty outgoing person, and she's always poking fun at other people's relationships. Her being in one just… doesn't work. _

Are you sure it's got nothing to do with Alex being— You know what, forget I asked that. Why the hell had he just started to ask that!? Not only did he already know the answer, but it made him sound like a confrontational prick! What happened to always having control of his own… That must be it. His tongue wasn't under control because it wasn't being controlled.

_O-kay then… _

Having wrangled his brain back under control, Nick took charge of the situation. "Flash, set a course for Kobol. You two, stop flirting."

Alex's ears darkened a few shades as he replied. "Wh— We're not flirting!"

Lannia, on the other hand, actually grinned at the suggestion. "I don't know, mister. You did just invite me to watch a movie with you."

"It's Star Wars, and you've never watched it! I couldn't just let you continue to live your life in ignorance!"

"This ship doesn't have a theatre, and I don't think that yours does either. You invited me to watch a movie in your quarters. That's practically a date. But hey, look on the bright side! I said yes!" The redder Alex's ears got, the wider Lannia's grin. Nick, while amused, was also confused.

_Not so slick anymore, are we? _

_She's already used up everything that I was going to use against her… _

_Even if you had used it against her, it wouldn't work. Lannia is impossible to tease. _

_Do you have any normal mammals on your crew? You have a mental link with me, Lannia doesn't know the definition of embarrassment, Jack is… Jack, The Oryx-Antlersons have eardrums of steel and vocal cords to match, and that elephant seems to be in a constant state of excitement. Oh, and let's not forget George. _

_What about Nathan? _

_He's pretty tame compared to the rest of your crew, but he's still got his quirks. _

_Everybody has their quirks. _

_True. _

Lannia continued to embarrass Alex for a few more seconds until he noticed and eagerly pointed out that Samantha had made it to the bridge on the other side of the screen in an attempt to escape the teasing. It worked, and everyone once again focused on the task at hand.

"Alright, are we all rea—" was as far as Nick got before an alarm came from Arnold's console.

"They're here!"

"If you're not ready you're wrong! Flash, hit it!"

Flash looked directly towards Samantha on the other side of the screen and simply said "Follow… me!" before the horning kicked in, followed a few seconds later by the jump to hyperspace.

For what felt like an hour but could've been as short as thirty seconds, everything was silent. The only things moving in the entire room were Flash's arms, and even they only moved occasionally.

_So quiet… _

_Shut up. _

The tense, yet somehow comfortable silence continued for another indeterminate amount of time. However, it instantly lost its comfort, and soon after that, it's silence, when Arnold announced that they were being followed.

"Damnit. Flash could get us out of here if he were at the helm of the thousand, but this thing isn't maneuverable enough!"

"I've got an idea. Thousand, keep going. Don't stop." As Judy continued explaining, Nick's face became more concerned. "Nick, if you use your power, that should let Flash make some pretty crazy maneuvers."

"I don't know how to use my powers yet! It just happened last time!"

"Then learn! Last time you were heading into the unknown, right? You don't know what's going to happen now, so just do what you did last time! Go crazy, Flash."

"As you… wish." Flash's long claws looked like they were going in even slower motion than usual to Nick as they made their way over to the other side of the console. As one of those talons came down and slowly started to move a slider upwards, Nick shut his eyes, and felt nothing. And continued to feel nothing. When nothing continued to happen, he slowly opened his eyes. "Did it work?"

"Flash just did a complete one-eighty and I didn't feel a thing, so yeah, I'd say it worked." If Lannia's eyes were any wider, they'd almost certainly pop out of their sockets.

"That's… really anti-climactic, actually."

"How so?"

"All I really did was wanted it to happen."

"Did you at least feel anything?"

"Not a thing. It's probably the most boring way to use a superpower that I can think of."

"Oh."

"My thoughts exactly."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Because my brain is ridiculously good at procrastination, I never actually wrote the reason why I was terrified of writing this chapter. That doesn't mean that this still wasn't the hardest chapter for me to write so far. The section where Judy 'talks' to Nick about him not showing that he cares for his crew was really hard for me to write, So my brain took the first opportunity available to make a joke out of it and leave that section.


	13. You're lying

"Wait, so all you needed to do was… wish it?" Judy asked Nick thoughtfully.

"pretty much, yeah."

"So, theoretically, I could just… tell my power to activate?"

"Maybe? I mean, I already knew what my power was, and that might mean something."

"I'm still going to try." Judy closed her eyes, starting to focus and try different thought patterns.

As Nick listened in on what was happening, he remembered something crucial. _WAIT!_

Judy practically jumped out of her seat in shock at the sudden intrusion on her thoughts. "What the hell, Nick!?" Just as Judy finished expressing her emotions, Flash made a slight, but quick, turn, and she was nearly thrown out of her seat again. Nick's power had stopped working. "And again, what. The. Hell!"

"Jack said that some of the mammals with powers died because of them."

Judy's anger was instantly replaced by shock. "Oh."

Lannia, too, was mollified, but unlike Judy was still able to formulate coherent thoughts. "That's… probably the one valid reason for what you just did, and I don't even know what the first one was about. I'm impressed."

The silence as everyone absorbed the information was interrupted when Flash took another turn slightly too tight for comfort.

_I think that Flash wants you to turn your power on again._

As if to emphasize it more, Flash took another, even tighter turn.

"Alright, buddy, I'll turn it on again."

Flash held up one arm and extend three talons. Then lowered one, then the second, and finally, after almost six agonizing seconds, the third. The moment that his final claw hit his palm, the ship jumped out of hyperspace and the Horning shut off.

The Navy ship following them detected their jump and automatically followed suit. Because the _Sunstrike_ was Navy as well and was slower than the _Thousand_ and thus easier to follow, it had predictably followed them instead of their companion ship. However, it couldn't have been more wrong about the _Sunstrike_ being easier to follow.

The moment that the Navy ship shut it's Horning off, Flash reactivated the drive on the _Sunstrike_ while it was still decelerating, and because of the 180 that he had performed while still in hyperspace, they shot off in the complete opposite direction of that which the Navy ship was headed.

Nathan had been working to establish a connection and listen in on the other ship, and finished getting it to work in the last few seconds before they left the government ship in the dust. The only thing that managed to make it through the connection was a crystal clear "What the fu—" before it crackled out during the jump back into hyperspace.

Flash turned back towards the rest of the crew and grinned a wider grin than even Nick was capable of producing. The remaining mammals all took a few moments to glance between each other before Lannia burst out cheering. Judy and Alex joined her, Nathan sighed and leaned back in his chair, and Nick put his hands behind his head and grinned, though not as radiantly as Flash.

"We did it!" There could be no hiding how happy Lannia was.

Nathan, however, did not remain relaxed for long. "I hate to break the mood, but we're not quite done yet."

The cheer was rapidly replaced by fear. "Did they somehow follow us?"

"Wha—? Oh, noooo. They didn't follow us." The mammals all visibly relaxed, but the tension still wasn't completely gone.

"Then what is it?" Judy asked.

"Well… The ship warns mammals to brace themselves whenever the Horning turns on or off, and I've received no fewer than fourteen requests for clarification on exactly what happened. We may need to pick up the pace on telling everyone what's going on."

Nick was understandably unhappy. "Great. Just great."

"Do you think it'll be too much if we wait until we arrive at…" Judy glanced at Nick, presumably having forgotten the name of the planet. "Kobol?"

"...They'll survive, but I doubt they'll be happy."

"They won't be as unhappy as I will if I have to sit there explaining the same thing _over_ and _over_ again to distressed and confused mammals for hours. They can wait." Nick was adamant in his decision.

"Very well. I'll tell the crew that everything will be explained once we reach our rendezvous point. How long will it take us to get there?"

"Roughly one and a half hours, if my memory serves me correctly."

Nathan turned on the PA system and made the announcement that everything would be explained once they reached the rendezvous point.

"And now all we have to do is wait."

* * *

"What do you mean 'they got away'!? You received a distress signal from a life pod, so you already knew that the emergency was big enough that someone had to abandon their ship. Even after you learned that the ship had not only been taken over by a band of pirates, but that the _chief of security_ was helping them as well, you _still_ let them escape! Mammals could be dying because of you!" The buffalo seemed, somehow, to tower over the massive rhinoceros in the seat across from him.

"S-sir, there were... unforeseen complications!" The rhino was trying to shrink as far into his chair as possible, which might have been why the buffalo seemed so much larger.

"What were they?" The lack of emotion only terrified the rhino even more.

"Well, You're not going to believe this, but they pulled an impossible maneuver. Don't ask me how, but when we came out of hyperspace behind them, they had already rotated a full 180 degrees and blasted off in the opposite direction. They would have had to make that turn while still in hyperspace for it to work; Navy ships of that size just can't turn that fast, but their Horning was engaged the entire time while in hyperspace. Pretty much any turn more than a few degrees with an active Horning would kill most mammals." The pachyderm remained extremely tense, fearful that the commander across from him truly wouldn't believe his story.

"Do you have any proof?"

Relieved that the buffalo hadn't rejected his explanation completely, the rhino let out a breath that he hadn't known he had been holding. "Yes! I mean, yes. Yes I do. The cameras caught it all. They guys down in tech are still going wild about it."

"Hmph."

"..."

"I expect a _very_ detailed report sent to me within the next twelve hours. You may go."

Relieved, the rhino started to get up from his chair to leave the office, but was stopped when the buffalo added: "And McHorn, don't let it happen again."

"Yes sir! …Er, I mean no sir! Sir."

"Good. Now get out of my office."

Commander Bogo waited a few seconds after Captain McHorn had left his office before dropping his stern mask. His entire stature seemed to shrink by an entire two feet as he exhaled a deep breath and saying what he jokingly considered his personal mantra under his breath. "I'm going to need to drink tonight."

"That would be unwise."

Within milliseconds, Bogo had his mask back in place. "Who are you?" The buffalo's eyes were darting around the room at almost insane speeds while his ears twitched, attempting to locate the source of the sound. The rest of his face, however, remained entirely unaffected.

"For now, you can think of me as… a messenger." The calm, confident, but not quite boisterous voice was coming from just beneath the chair on the far side of Bogo's desk. Cautiously, the Commander stood up and began to approach the chair.

"A messenger for who?"

"That doesn't matter right now. What does matter is that you listen to what I have to say."

"Whatever you're going to say had better include an explanation as to why, and how, you're talking to me right now."

A brief, but full, chuckle came in response. The laugh was, oddly, considering the scenario, not intimidating or creepy in the slightest, and rather sounded like whoever had laughed it was merely having a good time. "Almost everything that I want to tell you is contained in that question, so yes, I will definitely be answering it. I suppose I'll start with how I got a communication device stuck to the bottom of this chair."

"I… Yes, that would be a good place to start." Bogo had been expecting to have to fight a least a little bit to obtain that information. Having it thrust upon him was slightly destabilizing. This mammal was either extremely smart or very dumb; If he knew how the device got there it would be far easier to figure out where the mammal on the other end was.

"I have been trying to find a way to tell you a few things for a while. Contacting you would be easy. Making you believe what I had to say would not. Imagine my surprise when your situation took a turn that would make every single problem that I faced in giving you this information exponentially easier."

"Does it have something to do with the band of pirates that captured the _Sunstrike_?"

Before the response came, the buffalo heard… applause, but it didn't sound quite right. This mammal was playing a _sound effect_ of applause to him. Who does that? "I'm impressed! Very good! One of the things that I'm going to discuss with you is the nature of the 'pirates' that captured that ship, but I believe that I should save that for after you have a little bit more context. First, you need to know that I bribed Captain McHorn to put the device under the chair. I would have given him a smaller one, but rhino fingers are only so dexterous."

Bogo finally bent down to look under the chair. The device looked rather as expected, with a small microphone and a speaker, but there were also a few small extensions of indiscernible purpose.

"Bribed?" The Commander's tone was both cautious and tense to such an extent that it was difficult to tell that the emotions were even there.

"Yes. It was kind of sad, really. He only asked for a couple of hundred dollars before haggling. I would've paid more than a thousand." There was no way that this mammal was that dumb. Speaking so casually about something like that to a Navy Commander was _suicidal_.

"I will personally fire him and have him tried as soon as I'm done with this… meeting."

"Oh, he's not the only one. I have proof that over 30 percent of Navy officials over the rank of sergeant have engaged in some form of corruption. That figure jumps to 60 percent when we're talking about captains." Maybe he actually was that dumb. Those numbers were high enough that it could only be a conspiracy theory.

"You're lying."

"Tell me, what is the wage of a captain of a standard Navy cruiser?"

"About 70,000 dollars per annum. Why?"

"Then how do Navy officials collectively spend over 500,000 dollars in brothels every earth year? And isn't it odd that Navy instructors live so lavishly when drugs are so prevalent at the academies?"

Bogo said nothing. He couldn't say anything.

"That's what I thought. Now you're probably wondering why I'm telling you this."

"...You could say that."

"The 'pirates' who captured that ship were members of the Resistance. A few months ago, captain Hopps' chief engineer and friend Jackson Pine was kidnapped. While in transit aboard a Navy ship working for a secret lab run by the high levels of the government, he was rescued by the resistance. The reason that the ship of one of the relatively few uncorrupt captains was targeted by the resistance was that Pine knew that Hopps always wanted to do good. She would likely join the resistance after she had been educated on some of the less savory things that the Sons' have done, much like I'm doing with you now."

The unspoken request was about as subtle as a brick wall. "You want me to commit treason to join this 'resistance'."

"Precisely. I will send you a document detailing everything that you need to know momentarily." The rapid manner in which the mystery mammal fired off words sounded almost like an infomercial. "In the meantime, I urge you not to say or do anything about any of this until you have read all of the information and have thought long and hard about it. I'll contact you again in three days."

"Do—" was all that managed to escape Bogo's muzzle before a horrible, grating sound emanated from the device. When Bogo looked under the chair, all that remained of it was a puddle of rapidly evaporating slag. After a few moments, not a single trace remained that it was ever even there.

The buffalo just stood there for a good minute before sighing and dropping heavily into his chair. Glancing towards his console, he saw that McHorn had completed his report of the escaped _Sunstrike_. Dreading returning to work, for he would certainly have to sooner or later, Bogo sighed. "I am going to need a drink tonight."

* * *

**Author's Note:** I was on a good streak for a while, posting every Tuesday. Part of me wishes that I had continued that streak, but Sunday really is a better day for me to be posting. I have more free time in the days leading up to it, and it's sooner after the mutual review meetings on my discord server (shameless plug: If you're a Zoot author, please join the Zootopian Authors Association discord server).

I really don't have much more to say here. Oh yeah! I almost forgot to beg for reviews! If you have anything at all that you would like to say, please say it. If you notice an issue, I'll gladly discuss it with you. If there is something that you want to see happen, I'll try to find a place to include it if I like the idea. If you have a question, I'll answer it to the best of my ability. I suppose that I'd like favorites and follows as well, but reviews really are a lot more fun for all parties involved.


	14. We're here for you

The ride to Kobol was one of the most pleasant that Judy had had in a long time. Lannia and Alex were chatting next to Lannia's console, with an occasional burst of laughter coming from their direction. Nathan was having a discussion with Flash, who he was discovering had an uncannily similar, almost identical, personality to his cousin.

She and Nick were mostly quiet, simply enjoying the break in the action and occasionally exchanging a few thoughts, primarily about how well their crews were getting along.

The peace, however, could only last so long. "We're getting close to Kobol. Do we know how we're going to talk to the remaining crew?" glanced towards Flash and Nathan, who had made the announcement, before turning her head back towards Nick.

_Do we have a plan?_

_Not beyond 'tell the crew about everything', no._

It felt almost like waking up in the morning. Judy wanted to slip back into the relaxed — she hesitated to consider it blissful, but the more she thought about it, the more that she realized that it was — state that she had been in during the ride, but she knew that she had to get back to work. Letting out a sigh, she began to speak. "I suppose that talking to them one at a time again will be too slow?"

Nathan answered with a simple "Probably."

Lannia had other concerns. "We can't make a mass announcement either, because we won't have any way of preventing another 'George incident' from happening."

The group sat in silence for a few moments, try to think of the best way to tell everyone. It wasn't long before Flash spoke. "Get… bigger… groups…"

After staring at Flash for a second, Lannia put words to what everyone else in the room was thinking. "And now I feel like an idiot. Why didn't we think of that sooner?"

"I did… think… of that… sooner." Flash's grin couldn't have been much wider. It was no wonder that Sloths spoke slowly. They didn't need to if they could convey that much without speaking at all. "And… speaking of… sooner…, we will… be there… sooner… than…" the ship jumped out of hyperspace and shut off the Horning, "now."

A picturesque blue planet stood directly in the center of the front window. Thin, wispy clouds swirled over the continents and oceans of the rather earthlike sphere, obscuring parts of the surface, but not subtracting from the beauty.

"Do you have a base down there?" Lannia asked.

"Nah. This whole place is a decoy. We go here whenever we're at risk of being followed so that the Sons' don't catch wind of where any of our real bases are."

"Hmm. Makes sense."

Their observation of the idyllic world was cut short by a beeping sound from Nathan's monitor. "That would the _Thousand_. I'm accepting the hail."

The now-familiar bridge of the Resistance ship appeared on the screens to either side of the window, revealing a relieved looking crew. Honey spoke first. "You made it."

"Of course I did, it was only a Navy cruiser. Losing it was quite easy, really." Nick had put up a confident, cocky mask, but it was exaggerated enough that it was clearly a joke.

"Cut the smarm, Wilde. The only reason you escaped was 'cause ya had Flash and you know it."

Nick's smug grin became completely genuine upon hearing Finnick's remark. "Actually, that's not true. I'm not saying that Flash couldn't have escaped without my help, but I made it _far_ easier for him." The rest of the mammals on the _Sunstrike_ joined in the grinning once they caught on.

"Whad'did ya do? Bless 'im with your presence?"

"That's not too far off from the truth, really."

"I… agree." Flash joined in the heckling.

"Yeah, right." Finnick scowled.

"No, really. If Nick hadn't 'blessed him with his presence', as you so eloquently stated, we wouldn't have been able to do that 180 with the Horning engaged." Now Lannia was joining in.

Soon after Lannia, Alex added his voice. "And when we just shot straight past them, that was fun too."

"And then what, did you do a triple barrel roll while simultaneously backflipping in celebration?"

"Ohhh… We should've done that. Opportunity missed, I guess."

"Hmph."

"I believe that they are telling the truth." Everyone was mildly startled by the sudden appearance of Jack's excited voice. "Speaking of which, Nick, I would like you to come down to my workshop as soon as possible."

"And suddenly I've lost all interest. Have fun with that bastard." Finnick had a long-standing enmity with Jack. Well, not exactly. It was more of a running joke. Finnick, a mechanic, fixed things that needed fixing. Jack, and engineer, fixed things that didn't. Normally, this would lead to a true enmity, but Jack was just so damn likable. It was almost as easy to like him as it was to be irritated at him. Plus, Jack simply didn't care.

"Wait… did you do the thing? With the thing?" Honey asked, wide-eyed.

"If you're talking about the thing, then yes." Nick grinned proudly.

"Really!? How was it?"

"It was incredibly boring." Nick said it the same proud tone and dramatic flair that he had used in his previous statement.

"...Oh. Why?"

It took a few minutes for the mammals on the bridge of the _Thousand_ to finish interrogating Nick about the use of his power, and they were only stopped by Nathan interrupting to remind them about the waiting crew.

Nick groaned. "I was hoping that you'd let me forget about that."

"The rest of the crew wasn't."

"Fine, fine. I'll do it."

Seeing the transition back to work, Honey was reminded of business on the _Thousand_'s end. "That reminds me: HQ got back to us. Let's just say that they aren't thrilled about the logistics of a former Navy captain joining like this, and George gave them a very good reason for that."

"That… we can deal with later. Did they say anything about the powers?"

"I neglected to mention those. I figured that you'd probably want to reveal it with a demonstration of some kind. Flash'd probably like it too."

Flash grinned while Nick replied. "I'm looking forward to that."

"That's good. Now you should probably go talk to those mammals."

Nick sighed, and Lannia chuckled at him.

* * *

Telling the crew about the current situation went much as it had before the George Incident, as everybody was now calling it. Bringing in three rooms worth of mammals at once caused some slight tension occasionally, but overall it wasn't much worse than the single room approach. It was probably better when the increased efficiency was taken into account.

There were a few times when Judy was afraid that a mammal was going to be a repeat of George, but they were always alone in a group and quickly died down when they realized that they didn't have the support of the other mammals. Groups really were the better way to go. She doubted that it would've helped in George's case, though.

By the time they were finished, everyone was exhausted and ready for a good night's sleep. Yawning, Lannia rhetorically asked if they were going to head back to the _Thousand_ for the night.

Judy's answer, however, was not rhetorical. "Our quarters are on this ship. I figured that we'd just stay here."

Lannia's eyes lit up as she replied. "Oh, yesss. That sounds nice."

Alex turned his gaze from Lannia to Nick. "Are _we_ going back to the _Thousand_?"

Nick, in turn, looked towards Flash as he prepared his answer, but was stopped short upon seeing that the sloth was already fast asleep in his chair. "Uh… We'll be staying in the guest rooms."

"What are we going to do with Flash?" Nathan asked.

Alex gave an easy reply of "Oh, he'll wake up when someone else gets here in the morning."

"Huh. Samantha does that sometimes, too. I'm having a hard time figuring out if they're actually different sloths." Nathan paused to contemplate. "Speaking of Samantha, where will she sleep?"

Nick had to think about that for a moment. "We don't have any guest rooms on the _Thousand_, but from what I'm hearing, she's kind of like Flash and will sleep anywhere, so I imagine she'll go back to the cells. I mean, I'll make sure that they remain unlocked, but there isn't really anywhere else to put her."

Everyone was slightly uneasy for a second, but it quickly passed. Samantha wouldn't give a damn anyway.

Lannia offered to guide the guests that hadn't fallen asleep to their quarters. Despite minor protests from Nick, saying that he already knew how to get there, she took them, which gave Judy the much-needed opportunity to talk with Nathan. "Today sure has been… something."

"It certainly has."

Judy sighed, and the two stared out of the window at the serene planet they were orbiting. Somehow, Judy knew that the peace that she felt right now wouldn't last once they left the planet behind. Flash just snored.

An indeterminable amount of time passed before Judy spoke again. "I don't know anymore."

"Know what?"

"I… I feel like we're doing the right thing, joining the Resistance, but…"

"But everything is different, and you aren't sure if you can keep up?"

"...yeah. I just… I haven't been in a situation before when the future was so unclear. My entire life, I could see what was coming before it happened. Joining the Navy, becoming a captain… but now… I… I just don't know." Judy turned her head from the view of the planet towards the ceiling and sighed. "I don't know what I'm doing with my life anymore. I mean, what are we going to _do_ in the Resistance? They seem to be a fan of nonviolence, but how long can that last? And how will I talk to my family? What will they think?"

Flash snored, and silence fell once more. "I don't think any of us know the answers to those questions." Nathan eventually replied. "I'm not going to lie, I'm also terrified of the future, but I know that we'll look out for one another. I'm here, Lannia's here, and we even have Jack back. We'll stand by you, and we know that you'll stand by us. The future may be uncertain, we may not even survive it, but if there's anything that is certain, it's that you have friends, and we'll be there for you, and with you."

"...Thank you." Judy smiled weakly up at Nathan. "What did I do to deserve such a caring crew?"

"You were there for us. When Lannia's dad died, you helped her through the pain. When Jack was kidnapped, you looked for him, even after the Navy gave you other assignments. We all watched you continue to ask questions on every planet that we stopped at months after Jack was lost. Every time that any one of us needed help, you gave it. _That_ is what you've done to deserve this crew."

"He's right, you know." Lannia had just returned to the bridge. "I still miss my dad, but it doesn't hurt nearly as much because of you. You help mammals, and I can guarantee that every one of us would do the same for you."

Tears were now openly forming in Judy's eyes. "Thank you. Thank you both so much. I… I really needed that. Thank you."

"Nathan placed his hoof on her shoulder and smiled, his eyes moist as well. "Any time, Judy. Any time."

The three mammals continued to observe the planet in front of them as night slowly completed its steady march across the surface. They stayed there for a while more before they finally left the bridge for the comforts of their quarters. In the silence of the empty bridge, Flash continued to snore.

* * *

**Author's note: **This story is now over a quarter of the way to 100k words! [insert sappy 'I never would've imagined it would get this big when I started' speech here] I really appreciate all of my readers and love it whenever I get any reviews and favorites, especially reviews. Speaking of reviews, I'd like to know which character you people like best. One of my goals while writing this story is to craft an enjoyable group dynamic, and that requires me to make sure that I'm showing a variety of personalities, but that all of the personalities are strong.

About a quarter of the way into this chapter, It became significantly harder to actually write. I would sit down, and nothing would come to me. I could still put words dows, but it took me a long time and I was constantly getting distracted. Fortunately, that stopped in the final quarter of the chapter. It just flowed out, and I even got a little emotional during it. No actual tears, but I was close.

I've also begun collaborating with la-perla's mermaid (fanfiction{dot}net/u/1079697/la-perla-s-mermaid) on a story. It's not exactly the collab that I mentioned... last chapter? (I don't remember which chapter it was and I'm too lazy to check), but it is a collab.


	15. Shut up or I'll ignite you

Jack's mind was abuzz with even more activity than usual. Nick's discovery of how to use his power was even more exciting than being asked to develop a way to pierce Navy shields had been. How did the effect work? How far did it extend? Could Nick control it further than simply turning it on and off? Could Judy activate hers in the same way? What was… The questions were seemingly endless, and Jack had been preparing sensors to test as many of them as he could all night. He primarily thought of himself as an engineer rather than a scientist, but this opportunity was too good to pass up.

Nick and Judy should be arriving at his workshop as soon as they finished talking to the crew on the _Sunstrike_ again this morning. Fortunately, it was deemed that a mass meeting was acceptable now that everybody had been informed of at least the basics, so he wouldn't have to wait as long. And for the time that he did spend waiting, he could always set up more experiments.

When the two captains finally did arrive, the room could almost be considered a technological minefield, albeit a well-organized one with walkways. Needless to say, the fox and the bunny certainly weren't prepared for the sight. Nick was the first to speak. "Where did all of this even come from? There's only so much space in storage…"

"Section E of the cargo bay."

"Isn't that where the spare parts are stored?"

"It is."

"You do realize what Finnick is going to do when he sees that something is missing, right?"

"I didn't take any spare parts."

"Then where did all of this come from!?"

"Section E of the cargo bay."

"Are—… You know what? I'm not going to think about that anymore." The way Nick glanced at Judy as he said it, it was clear that she had somehow intervened. They were already getting very adept at using the link, and it had only been a few days. Jack would have to ask about that at some point.

"Do you have any other questions before we begin?"

"Just one," Judy said. "What, specifically, do you plan to test?"

"The only concise answer to that question is 'everything'."

_That's not fair. He has never given me an answer that simple in the entire time that He's been on my ship. How did you do it?_

_It comes with time. I've known him for twenty-eight years._

_Really? You couldn't even give me a _little _bit of hope?_

_Nope!_

Nick had no reply.

After only a few seconds, Jack saw that their mental exchange was over. "The first test that I would like to perform is quite simple." Jack walked over to what appeared to be a tube with an axel through its side. "This is a tube with an axel through its side. Inside the tube is a small sensor. Depending on how your power works the sensor will either transmit normal data, like this," Jack spun the tube and a curving graph began to appear on a nearby monitor, "or it will transmit something more interesting. Please activate your power."

After Nick had confirmed that had turned it on, Jack spun the tube again. The graph that formed on the monitor looked identical to the control beforehand. "Is that good or bad?"

"Based on the limited information at my disposal, neither. Now try to focus your power only on the tube and nowhere else."

"How?"

"If your power works how I suspect it might, all that you will have to do is think about it."

"...Ok, I guess. Here goes."

Jack spun the tube once more, and like the previous time, the graph formed a smooth curve. Unlike last time, however, there was a slight twist at the end of the curve. "I think I got something! Let's try it again." Obligingly, Jack spun the tube yet another time. This time, the smooth curve was completely gone in favor of a small repeating wave. Nick's lips curved into a smile, but it soon faltered. "What does this mean?"

"The sensor inside of the tube is detecting the amount of force pushing it against the end of the tube. When I spin it normally, the centripetal force pushes the sensor towards the edge. When you used your power the first time, it affected the entire system, which had no effect on the sensor. This time you managed to limit the effect only to this system, which removed the centripetal force from inside the tube, leaving only gravity to affect the sensor."

Nick stared blankly until Judy interpreted.

_You can make your power only affect the inside of the tube instead of a larger area, like the entire ship, which includes the tube _and _the things inside it._

_I knew that._

_Sure you did_.

Over the course of two hours of testing, Jack had made a number of discoveries about Nick's power, most of them involving its constraints. Nick could only remove non-inertial reference frames inside of closed solid containers, but airtightness was not required. As puzzling as that was, there were other things that also occupied his thoughts. Nick could only create one "inertial field" at once, and he was unable to recreate the situation from immediately before he rescued Jack, when the field apparently only operated at partial power. Even more importantly, he had yet to test Judy's abilities.

"That was the last of the tests for Nick. Do you have any questions?" When neither of them did, Jack turned towards the corner of the room that had not yet been explored. "These experiments are for Judy."

Judy's brows creased in confusion before she answered. "But I don't know my power yet."

"Precisely."

"But… didn't you say that some of the mammals accidentally killed themselves with their powers?" Judy asked apprehensively. "Wouldn't it be safer if I didn't try to use mine?"

"The deaths were always a product of a mammal using their powers on themselves. For example, while Nick's power wouldn't be fatal if he used it on himself, it would be extremely disorientating. Because Nick was able to control what his power affected, I suspect that you will be able to do the same."

Judy was reassured, but still nervous. "That… makes sense. Ok. What do you want me to do?"

In response, Jack turned towards a clear box surrounded by various sensors and cameras with an apple inside. "Try to focus your power on the apple. If the sensors don't pick anything up from that, we will try shifting your focus to the box."

"Got it. Here goes nothing." Judy narrowed her eyes and set her gaze on the apple. Nothing happened.

_And there nothing went._

_Shut up, I'm trying to focus._

_That's your problem. Just think about making it happen. Although, that apple might burst into flames any moment now regardless of powers, with the way you're staring at it._

_Shut up or I'll ignite _you.

_I didn't think that I could get any hotter._

Even as she turned her glare towards him, Nick could tell that she was taking his advice. Or maybe he had just distracted her enough that she wasn't focusing all of her brainpower on the apple. Either way, the moment that she let her gaze leave the apple, her power started to work.

The first thing that happened was that her ears shot up as a loud shattering sound came from the box. Next, her eyes, which had only made it halfway to Nick, returned to the apple. There was a sizeable crack in one side of the box, and instead of an apple, there were a number of red and white shards inside. Nick had already taken a few steps back.

"Ummm… what the hell just happened?"

* * *

Commander Bogo had stayed awake for hours reviewing the information that the mystery mammal had sent him. At first, he wasn't inclined to believe it, but the more that he read, the more the evidence started to stack up. Everything that he read surprised him, and much of it disgusted him as well. The mystery mammal was right; he couldn't keep working for a Navy that was so corrupt and did such horrible things, but leaving wouldn't be so simple.

There were a number of barriers to joining the Resistance, as the mystery mammal had suggested. If he were to leave, the Sons' would find someone new for his position, and he had no way of knowing what that mammal would be like. If a war started, he would like to be in control of his division of the Navy. If he left, he would have to go out with a bang.

The question was what kind of bang. He could try to even the playing field in case of a war by literally destroying his part of the military infrastructure, but that would take time and more importantly, mammals. As far as he knew, there wasn't anyone who he could trust with that kind of thing.

Or were there? As dark as the documents had been, there was no way that he was the only mammal who had a conscience among the Navy. He couldn't just pass the information out blindly, but chances were that he could find at least a few trustworthy mammals. He could start at the top, determine which of his officers might be sympathetic upon learning the truth, and then work his way down the chain of command with their help. Then, he wouldn't need to destroy the infrastructure. He could just take it with him.

With a plan in mind, he finally got up from his desk so that he could get some sleep. Just as he was closing his eyes, however, his alarm went off. Going over the documents had taken him all night.

On the bright side, he could set his plan into action sooner. If he let himself look on the dark side, he'd probably end up crushing the mug of coffee in his hoof.

He arrived at his office like normal and stared at the pile of paperwork on his desk for a full two minutes. His plan would have to wait. At least he would have time to think about who to talk to first.

By the time that he finished the paperwork, he had decided on Lieutenant Commander Higgins. The hippo worked almost as much as he did; he didn't have time to be corrupt, and they had been working together for long enough that he could be trusted. The summons only took a few minutes to create and send. It only took a few more minutes for the hippo to arrive.

"You wanted me, Sir?" he saluted.

"Yes. At ease, this doesn't directly involve work."

The pachyderm relaxed and asked: "Ok. What's it about, then?"

Bogo stood up and locked the door. "Before I tell you, I need you to promise that you won't say anything about this to anyone unless I tell you that it's ok."

"Ummm… What's this about?" It was probably a good thing that he didn't immediately say yes, it meant that he would actually think about it. However, it wasn't as convenient.

"Please. Trust me on this."

"I… Ok, but that's all I'm promising until you tell me more."

"That's fair enough. Last night, I received a message that contained some very concerning information." Bogo said as he pulled up the documents. "Take a look at this."

* * *

**Author's Note:** I've read plenty of author's notes claiming that 'transition chapters are hard', but this is my first real experience writing a transition chapter. I completely agree with all of the other authors on it. Transition chapters are hard to write. But I'm done with it now, and while I can't guarantee it to be the next chapter, I will be able to get back to the action soon.

Aside from that, the first chapter of the collab that I'm working on should be released sometime later this week. Get ready for some [censored to prevent spoilers], [censored to prevent spoilers], and [censored to prevent spoilers].


	16. The Glory Days

"Ummm… What the hell just happened?"

Judy couldn't even see Jack's fingers as they moved across the console, tapping buttons, dragging windows, and analyzing graphs. "It would appear that a number of impossible things just happened."

"How impossible are we talking?" Judy asked excitedly.

"The apple changed from a constant velocity of zero to a very high constant velocity with no acceleration in between. Simultaneously, it's temperature dropped too low for the sensors to read, presumably to absolute zero." Jack tapped a few more buttons before continuing. "The velocity appears to have changed in an equal proportion to the initial temperature of the apple."

"So… I turned the heat of the apple into movement?"

"That would be a suitable simplification," Jack confirmed. "I suspect that you are uniforming the thermal motion of the molecules, causing them all to move in the same direction at the same velocity, which makes their relative motion zero, dropping their temperature, but increasing the motion of the entire system. I need more tests to confirm that, though."

"That's so much _cooler_ than my power. Why did I get stuck with the boring one?" Nick remarked. Judy glared at him, but couldn't keep a small grin from her face at the pun, much to her chagrin.

"You don't know that yet. It might have some pretty significant drawbacks." As it turned out in the rest of the tests, there were a few. She could only manipulate objects that she could directly see. Jack tested the maximum distance using a series of mirrors to increase the distance Judy perceived an object to be. It turned out to be about 400 meters. She couldn't affect objects through a camera, though.

One thing that wasn't a drawback, however, was that Judy could also reverse her power, slowing objects down while heating them up. The testing continued for the rest of the day, ranging from the overall usability of the powers to the fine details of how they actually did what they did. Despite numerous hours of tests, how Nick and Judy actually caused anything to happen was still a mystery.

The two captains went to bed exhausted, but couldn't stop thinking about what they had learned.

* * *

When Judy woke up, her thoughts immediately went to— nope. She was not going to think about yesterday anymore. She had already been thinking about it for almost twenty-four hours, and her brain couldn't take it anymore. She would have to think about something else instead. What could she think about?

Today. She could think about today. Today they were supposed to arrive at the Resistance headquarters, New Zootopia, of which she knew nothing about. She could try and probe Nick's brain for more information, but he asked her not to so that it would be more of a surprise. If it was worthy of him wanting it to be a surprise, she may as well go with it.

She rolled out of her bed — Samantha had taken her and Lannia back to the _Sunstrike_ at the end of the day and Nathan had never left — and got ready. She contemplated wearing her uniform to meet the rest of the Resistance but quickly discarded the idea. A Navy uniform wouldn't provide the best first impressions to a faction that would soon be at war with the Navy.

When she opened the door to the dining hall, the chatter of room full of mammals hit her ears, startling her slightly. She had known, logically, that everyone would be back, and they would've been there yesterday as well, but it was still a shock tor her system after all the time when she either wasn't on the ship or the rest of the crew had been hidden away in their quarters.

After grabbing her salad, she scanned the crowd for Nathan and Lannia. The two ungulates were sitting at their usual table, poking at salads of their own. Nathan called out as Judy approached. "What did you find out with Jack yesterday? Lannia won't tell me."

So much for not thinking about it. "In short, a lot. Jack did a few more tests with Nick, which would probably be a lot more interesting if I was a scientist, and then he did some tests on me. It was… interesting, but I got kinda bored after a while."

"What about your power? Did you find out anything about that?"

"Yeah. It's…" Judy paused to search for a way to explain it without giving anything away too soon. "Pretty powerful, but also kind of niche."

"What can it do?"

"Well… how about this: do either of you have any cold coffee?"

Nathan looked at her quizzically. "...No?"

Lannia, who she had talked to last night on their way back from the _Thousand_, was only confused for a moment. "The last quarter of mine's only lukewarm."

"Good enough. Could you pass it over?"

Judy received the large mug and began to spin the liquid inside around. She then focused on the small whirlpool and felt the momentum of the mug change as the motion was converted into heat. She was very careful to not take it too far, in order to prevent anything like what had happened to the apple when she had first used her power.

When she began to feel the handle heat up, she passed it back to Lannia. "See? Niche, but powerful. I could probably save millions of lives by instantly heating up cold coffee."

Lannia laughed before replying, "You really are getting more like Nick."

_You hear that, Carrots?_

_Where did even come from?_ "I will admit that that was a very Nick-like joke, but I've still got a long way to go until I'm like Nick."

_I came from the biological process of the combination of two sets of DNA._

"I don't know… Are you sure you aren't soaking up Nick's personality?"

"You know what I mean."

"...What?"

"Wha-... ugh. Sorry, having two conversations at once is confusing. Which segways into my evidence that I'm not becoming like Nick, which is that Nick is in my head half the time, so I know what Nick is like, and it isn't really like me. Mostly. I guess."

_I don't know, Carrots, That really was a 'me' joke._

"Shut up." Judy grinned slightly but stopped when she realized that she had said it out loud. "Errr… see what I mean? It's hard." _Seriously, could you please let me talk to Nathan and Lannia?_

_Ok, ok. Fine, I'll let you talk._

"Sooo… What was Nick talking to you about?"

"He broke into the conversation when you mentioned that I was becoming more like him. He was quite pleased."

"I can imagine," Nathan commented. "Now, as much as I'm interested in your and Nick's link, that's old news. I still don't know what your power actually is, other than heating up coffee."

"Put simply, I can convert motion into heat and vice versa. There are some more complicated bits as well, like the fact that I break a few laws of physics in the process, but I only kind of break them, so I don't fully understand it."

"That… Ok. Makes about as much sense as Nick's power."

"Yeah. Jack says that all of the powers that he knows of look like they were thought up by someone who heard a little bit about physics and then made assumptions for the rest of it."

"Huh…" They all sat in silence for a few moments. Lannia was the first to break it.

"Alright! Enough thinking about weird existential stuff! What do you think New Zootopia will be like?"

"I'm not sure. My brain kinda goes to the stereotypical secret base, mostly underground, slightly dingy, but Nick isn't telling me anything. He wants to keep it secret for some reason."

"That's weird, Alex did the same with me. There's gotta be something going on here." Lannia thought for a moment.

"Can't you just grab the information from Nick?" Nathan asked.

"I could, but he asked me not to because it would 'ruin the surprise'."

Lannia narrowed her eyes. "So you don't want to find out ahead of time?"

"No, I absolutely want to find out. I just won't use the link to do it."

The three began grinning at each other. They had a mission to work on, and they had to complete it fast, Just like in their glory days from back in the academy.

* * *

**Three years ago:**

Today was the big day! Judy was about to arrive at the Naval Academy of Ruebaa 4. She had waited for weeks to receive the acceptance notification, and she was going to be one of the first recruits to go through the Navy's newest training facility. Not only that, but her lifelong friend Jackson Pine was in the same class as she was. She couldn't have gotten luckier.

The ship had already left hyperspace and the warning to brace for deceleration as the Horning was shut off sounded throughout the passenger cabin. She was about to see the planet that she'd be spending the next nine months of her life on for the first time.

She tightened her grip on the harness keeping her in place as she was pressed into it. Looking out of the window, she saw a small grey ball rapidly growing towards her. As it grew, nothing seemed to change. It just stayed a grey ball, floating in space around a medium-sized reddish star. Maybe it was covered in clouds?

Nope. It bore a strikingly similar appearance to a larger version of Earth's one moon before it had been terraformed. Where was all the greenery characteristic of terraformed planets? There had been plenty of it on the pictures that she had seen of the facility…

As the ship began orbiting the planet, a small amount of greenery did become apparent. There was a single speck of it near the equator, right on the edge of where the sun currently shown.

Two more orbits were completed before turning down towards the planet, during which the attendants reviewed landing procedures and what everyone should do upon landing. The descent was turbulent, but not nearly as bad as the attendants made it seem.

Upon landing and retrieving her luggage, Judy sought out Jack, who had been sitting further up in the passenger area. He had already collected his bags and was looking up at the massive doors that had closed above them, probably already having figured out exactly what kind of motor was required to move such enormous pieces of metal — or something like that.

The group was lead through a transparent tunnel towards a large dome, the location of the greenery seen from orbit. The sky above them was black, with some of the brighter stars still visible, even in the daytime.

As they were guided through the orientation of the domed facility, they learned that terraforming on the planet had just begun, and it would take a few years before the atmosphere could support plant life and turn the typical blue, and almost a decade after that before mammals would be able to survive without a special suit.

Jack was very eager to watch the terraforming in progress, even if he wouldn't be able to see it's completion. Judy was also interested, but it wasn't what she had come here for. Her goal was to become an officer and work on the bridge of a patrol ship. If she was lucky, she might even become a captain one day.

As basic orientation was completed, the new arrivals were separated into four bunk groups, two male and two female. In her group was an elephant named Francine, a deer named Lannia, and a capybara, Carina.

After unpacking and setting up her bunk, she spent the rest of the time until dinner getting to know her roommates. Francine and Lannia were friendly and easy to talk to. Carina was a bit more closed, but friendly enough as well. Lannia's dad was a retired Navy captain, and she was eager to follow in his footsteps. Francine and Carina, like Judy, were first-generation military mammals.

At dinner, Judy found herself sitting at a medium-sized table along with Lannia and Carina, with Jack at the next table over. The food wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either. Judy was looking forward to the next few months of her life.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I missed posting for the last two weeks, and I feel like I owe an explanation. The first week was a planned break, and completely my fault. I'll likely do more of those in the future, but infrequent, and I'll try to warn you ahead of time when they'll be happening. The second week was very busy, with the releases of the first two chapters of my collab with la-perla's mermaid (I know, last time I said that she didn't have an ao3 account, but she does. I was just incompetent when I looked for it.) and then the PG&E PSPS power outages hit me (you can google that if you want to know more), which prevented me from releasing a chapter.

Speaking of releasing chapters of the collab, we released chapters of the collab, Operation "Bloody Face Off". It's pretty different from this story thematically, but that's kind of the point. The biggest thing that I think it has going for it is unveiled at the end of chapter two, so if you start reading and think "ugh, another post-canon-WildeHopps story," Then please try to make it at least until then.

And getting back to this story, it bit me again. I had no plans to begin another flashback mini-arc when I started this chapter, and I still don't have plans now that I've finished it. All that I know is that I have to establish how the characters met and that there has to be some kind of operation to justify the segway that I used.

(Also, I don't actually remember if I gave Lannia's species before this chapter. If I did, and it wasn't 'white-tailed deer,' then I apologize, because that's what she is now.)


	17. A New Door

As the weeks passed, Judy became accustomed to academy life. She and Lannia quickly became good friends, along with Jack and an Impala named Nathan from his group. Carina usually hung around the other female group, and Francine spent time with just about everyone. There were only a few mammals who Judy didn't really like, but they were usually off on some other area of the campus, only returning to their bunk hall to sleep.

The academic situation was almost as good for Judy as the social one. There were a few classes that almost bored her out of her mind, but for the most part, she enjoyed them. They weren't so easy as to be without challenge, but they weren't too hard either. She was doing well, staying in the top 10 percent of most of her classes, and life was good.

After the first three months in the academy, the recruits had to select a specific path. Jack had begun his course of engineering early, but Judy and the rest of her friends had yet to officially decide what they wanted to do. After waiting for almost a week, Judy walked out of the door of the administrator in charge of facilitating the various cadets and their paths, a giraffe named Major Necker.

"How'd it go?" Lannia asked almost immediately after Judy arrived at dinner. The Major had been meeting with mammals one-on-one to make sure that they were all on the right track, and Lannia had her meeting earlier that same day.

"Pretty well, I think. We discussed a whole bunch of options, but in the end, I went with general command. How about you?"

"I thought that I would be in general command as well, but after talking about it, I decided to go into security. Major Necker thought it was a better fit for me, and I think she's probably right."

"Hmmm… Yeah, I can see that. 'Security Chief Lannia Virgam' would look pretty good on an office door," Judy commented. "Maybe I'd be a second officer or something. Our offices could be right next to each other."

Judy and Lannia continued idly pondering what might happen once they graduated until Nathan arrived at the cafeteria from wherever he had been that day and interrupted. "How did your meetings go, ladies?"

"Pretty well. Judy's going into general command and I'm doing security," Lannia answered. "Your meeting's tomorrow, right? What do you think you'll choose?"

"If I had to guess, probably command as well. That's what most mammals do," Nathan replied.

"C'mon! I'm sure you'd be great at command, but not because 'that's what most mammals do,'" Lannia chastised. "You've got skills. Didn't you study psychology in college or something? I hear that really helps with command."

"Alright, fine. I'll probably go into command because I think I'd be good at it. Is that what you want to hear?" Nathan grinned.

"Yes! Well, almost. You're still missing one thing."

"And that is…?"

"'Because I think I'd be _great_ at it.' I know you will." That was Lannia, alright. Always encouraging mammals, whether they wanted it or not.

* * *

Another two months passed, and the cadets began their individual paths. Jack kept up his work in engineering, sometimes staying up at the workshop or laboratory for hours after everyone was supposed to be in bed. Lannia trained in security, which was far more boring than she had hoped, with lecture after lecture after lecture. Judy and Nathan learned a lot more about receiving orders than giving them in general command, but it was interesting nonetheless.

After the third week of the new schedule, Nathan and Judy walked into the cafeteria to find Jack already there, a rarity due to how much time he spent in the workshop with the engineering professor.

"Fancy seeing you here this early!" Nathan called out as they approached their table. What brings you out of the tech pit?"

"Hello Nathan, Judy. I finished working on a concept for a large-scale airlock system that would allow landing bays to operate twenty-seven percent faster and could even make the interior docking of ships in space realistic."

"Can't transports already do that? Airlocks in stations aren't that hard to make..."

"Yes, but they are severely size-limited," Jack explained. "The doors require exponentially more space and energy the larger they get, so shuttle bays are common, but anything larger than that only exists on a few stations, and even then they're only slightly bigger."

"Fair enough. So how does your version change that?"

"Instead of using a traditional door, I would replace it with a modified shield. There are two primary kinds of shields being used today: matter shields, and energy shields. Matter shields behave as a solid, preventing objects from passing through, but can only be projected in bubbles, so they can't be used in an airlock. Energy shields absorb specific energy configurations, blocking energy-based weapons. These can be projected in 'walls' surrounded by emitters, as well as bubbles but don't do much to prevent air from escaping. If matter shields could be projected similarly to energy shields, they would no doubt already be used in airlocks, but no one has successfully found a way to make them do that yet."

"And you did!?" Judy asked, excited that her friend might have just made history.

Jack's reply was as even as ever. "No."

"Then how did you make a shield work as a door?" The female rabbit pondered, slightly disappointed.

"I essentially reversed an energy shield, causing it to release energy instead of absorbing it. It repels any molecules that get close enough to it, keeping the air in. It can't block anything heavy or fast enough from passing through, but it will damage objects, so it still has to be shut off to allow ships in."

"Wow… What do you think you'll get for inventing that?" Nathan asked.

"I haven't thought about that."

Judy, though not really surprised, responded instantly. "You should! You could probably buy your own planet or something! Well… maybe not a planet, but a whole lot of land on one somewhere. Anyway, what does your professor think?"

"He leaves me to do my own thing, mostly, so he doesn't know about it yet."

"Are you going to make some sort of formal announcement or something?"

"I don't have any plans for that, no. Anyway, I still have to do some fine-tuning and test the precise limits before I could."

"Well, I can't wait for whenever you do. A new type of shield is really big!"

"The emitters are very small, actuall–"

"Figuratively big, not literally."

"Oh, sorry."

* * *

There were no classes on the 6-month anniversary of the recruits' arrival on Ruebaa 4, but not because it was officially a special occasion. It simply fell on a Sunday, the weekly day off. To celebrate, Judy and her friends had decided to have a picnic in the gardens on the north edge of the dome.

Lannia was adamant that the campus 'fancy restaurant' didn't actually have food any better than the cafeteria food; it was just more expensive and you got to eat in a dimmer dining area, but they ordered food to go from there anyway. "Food tastes better when you pay more for it," Nathan had explained.

It took no more than a second for Lannia to find a suitable retort. "So it's actually even worse than the cafeteria food, I just think it's the same because it's more expensive?" Unfortunately, they were already in line when the conversation started, so it never paid off. The ten-minute walk from the restaurant to the gardens passed without incident, with Nathan and Lannia still trying to poke holes in each other's opinions on the food for the greater portion of it.

Over the course of the picnic, the conversation shifted to other topics, including Jack's airlock system being installed on its first space station. Jack smiled during the rounds of congratulations, and when Lannia called out for him to make a speech, he stood up and said "I would like to thank physics, the end." before sitting back down, grinning. Jokes from him were rare, and he was evidently extremely pleased with his accomplishment.

The conversation died down a bit as it got darker, the friends settling in to watch the sunset through the atmosphere outside of the dome. That was one of the best things about pre-terraformed planets: they all had different sunsets. The ones on terraformed planets were nice too, but greens and purples weren't common in nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres.

Once the light faded from the sky, Lannia went ahead on the way back to the dorms so she could use the restroom while everyone else finished packing up. As the rest of the group caught up to her, they found Lannia staring into an alley. "Did you see something?" Judy asked.

"Yeah… I'm like ninety percent sure that I saw a red tail going around this corner, and I don't think anyone at the academy has a red tail."

"Huh. You sure?"

"I am. The tail was pretty low to the ground, so whoever it was was fairly small. Probably bigger than you, but not by too much."

Lannia was confident, and Judy knew enough to trust her friend's judgment. "The alley isn't very big. Where could they have gone?" Judy asked, walking into the alley to get a better look at the surroundings.

"I would say straight through it, but I was here pretty soon after I saw the tail. There's no way they could have made it all the way through that fast without making a sound."

"So they either have some other way out or they're hiding in here somewhere," Judy responded as she bent down to look under a dumpster.

"Exactly. Is there a vent back there, by any chance?"

"Doesn't look like it. Is there anywhere else one could be?"

"The dumpster is the only thing in the alley beside us, so no."

"How about _in_ the dumpster?"

"Nope. I already checked."

Just then, a wildebeest instructor rounded the corner of the far side of the alley. "What are you doing here?" He asked, a hint of accusation present in his voice.

Lannia's ears fell back. "Oh! Er… hi, Mr. Jackson, sir." Mr. Jackson was the security instructor. "We thought we saw someone go into this alley, so we stopped to investigate."

"Well, is anyone in this alley?"

"...Not that we can find…"

"So you must have been mistaken," The officer enunciated clearly as if he were talking to schoolchildren. "Go back to your dorms, now. Curfew is in a few minutes."

As the wildebeest was talking to, or more accurately at, Lannia, Judy noticed something. On the corner of the dumpster, stuck inside of a hinge, was a tuft of red fur. She inched her way towards it, with a gut feeling that she shouldn't let Mr. Jackson notice her doing it. If he stretched up on her toes, she could just barely reach it. She pulled it down and inched her way back to where she had been standing. Nathan noticed it, and she lightly shook her head, telling him to stay quiet, when he narrowed his brows at her quizzically.

"Yes, sir. We were just finishing up here anyway," Lannia replied, turning around and ushering the group with her.

The wildebeest just watched as the four mammals walked away.

"Is he always like that?" Judy asked after they were clear of earshot.

"He's never been my favorite teacher, per se, but no, he hasn't acted like that before."

"It seemed almost like he was trying to hide something," Judy said, pulling out the tuft of fur.

Lannia's eyes widened. "Where did you find that?"

"It was stuck in one of the hinges on the dumpster. I'm pretty sure that whoever this belonged to climbed up on the dumpster and then pulled themselves onto the roof. It wouldn't be that hard to do quietly, and if they were strong or light enough, they could probably manage it fast enough that they were gone before you arrived."

"Are you sure you aren't in security?" Lannia asked, grinning.

"It just seemed like the most likely scenario. How else would they have gotten away?"

"Maybe, but that was still pretty good. I can bring this to the security lab and figure out what kind of mammal it came from."

"Wait… before you do that, do you really want to bring this to Mr. Jackson? Something felt off about him."

"I… Maybe? It did kind of feel… Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't do that," Lannia said. She fell silent for a moment before she continued excitedly "Jack! Is there anything that you could use to analyze this in your workshop?"

"Yes. It could analyze it. The machines aren't as precise as the ones designed for security, but I could still discover the species."

"Great! Can you do that tomorrow?"

"There isn't a reason I can't."

* * *

**Author's Notes: **I need to apologize for being two weeks late again. There was, guess what, PSPS outage that prevented me from posting on the first Sunday. Having two back-to-back outages really broke my routine, so I didn't write enough to get this out last Sunday, either. But I have something now.

Another development that happened over the past three weeks: Things happened on my discord server, and I ended up banning Wildebunny the Eternal (if you don't know who that is, you're lucky). As a result, A massive influx happened, pretty much doubling the number of active members. With those developments, I feel like it's a valid time for me to advertise it again. If you are an author of a Zootopia fanfiction or would like to be an author of a Zootopia fanfiction, feel free to join. The link is /NWqBfMJ.

Another thing involving the server: A few of us got together and wrote a crack fic. If you want to see it (for some reason, maybe you're drunk or something), It's available on my profile on AO3. Even if crack fics aren't your thing, I would recommend checking out the other authors that I worked on it with. All of them have interesting stories of there own and if you have the time, they're worth reading.

And finally something actually relevant to this story: What do you think about my description of Jack's airlock? Was it clear? was it confusing? Was it boring? I had fun writing it, so I hope you like it, but are detailed descriptions of tech something that you actually want?

Oh yeah! I almost forgot: I finally made a cover for this thing. It's at the beginning of chapter one over on AO3 if you want to see more than the tiny, cropped version used by


	18. The Plan

It took more than an entire day for the results of the fur test to get back to the group. Jack couldn't run the test until the morning, and because of his unique schedule, he didn't see anyone until he got to his bunkroom that night. There, he gave the results of the test to Nathan, who passed them on to the rest of the group during breakfast the next morning.

Everyone had been waiting with bated breath to hear the news ever since they first found the fur, and had speculated about it for the entirety of the previous day. When Judy and Lannia arrived in the cafeteria to find Nathan already there, they practically sprinted to the table. Their dash, along with shouts of various variations on "What does it say!?" drew more than a few odd looks.

"It says you owe me fifteen bucks." Nathan grinned as he pulled a small tablet out from his pocket.

"You're kidding me," Lannia replied. Nathan shook his head. "Really?"

"Yup. It's fox fur."

Lannia didn't seem at all bothered that she had just lost a bet; instead speculating on what the unexpected, to her, results could mean. "Where would it come from? There are only three ways in or out of the dome, and they're all well monitored. There weren't any breaches of security, Mr. Jackson would've said so otherwise," Lannia said.

"...If the entrances are all monitored, then someone here would've had to let them in..." Judy said, concerned.

"You're right," Lannia replied, "Someone who has the power to remove any records of their passing through."

"Could it be... Mr. Jackson? He didn't want us poking around when we found the fur..." Nathan said.

"It... He's an instructor..." Lannia replied. "But... it does make sense. In his own words, 'If all signs point to one thing, it probably is that thing.' It doesn't really roll off the tongue, but it's true"

"So... what now? Do we investigate him? And find out why the fox was here?" Judy asked.

"I think so. How will we go about it? I'm in his class, so I can, I don't know, ask him stuff and generally observe."

"I don't want to jump into the deep end, we might be wrong, but chances are Jack could hack into his computer."

"He's the chief security instructor here. He's going to have some pretty good security on it, Judy."

"And Jack's Jack," Judy rebuked.

"...Good point."

Most of the points of discussion about the fur were exhausted, but they kept talking about it anyway for much of the remainder of breakfast. At one point, Lannia noticed Mr. Jackson sitting a few tables away from them, and immediately hushed the group, sure he was trying to eavesdrop. After a few minutes, he got up and left, apparently done talking with another instructor. Very tentatively, the conversation resumed.

Final confirmations of what they would do were exchanged as everyone got ready for their first classes of the day. Lannia would watch Mr. Jackson during her class with him, but not take it further than that. Everyone else had a similar plan of 'be aware,' but they didn't have any specific targets. The real fun would only begin once everyone regrouped after dinner.

"Did you notice anything?" Judy asked Lannia.

"Unfortunately, no. All of the seats closest to his desk are for larger mammals, so I couldn't get close enough for any serious observing. How about you?"

"No. I walked past the alley again during my lunch break, but I couldn't go in to investigate; there were too many mammals around. You, Nathan?"

"Same story, pretty much. A whole lot of nothing," Nathan replied. Judy sighed. She knew that they probably weren't going to find anything so easily, but she had still hoped. "...except for this." Judy's ears immediately sprung straight upwards, and her body seemed to follow them in a small hop. Lannia experienced a similar rush of joy, except hers involved less motion of the head. Even though female deer didn't have antlers, they still somehow picked up the habit of keeping their heads still when they got excited.

"What is it!?" They both cried, almost in unison.

Nathan had already pulled out his tablet and brought up a couple of images. "The door to the janitor's closet just down the hall from my general command class was open a crack, so I took a peek inside while nobody was around. I almost missed it, but there was a little bit of white peeking out from behind a jug of some chemical or other. I checked it out, and it was a note. take a look." He proffered the tablet to the two does so they could see the note.

_Could I have a triple order this time? I've got a little get-together planned for later this week, and I'd like some extra fuel to share._

The pawwriting was slightly messy, but easily legible nonetheless. "There was also a wad of cash," Nathan said as he pulled the tablet back to make a few swipes, "Eighty-three dollars in total."

"That looks like a drug deal..." Judy noted.

"Exactly."

"And I bet that it has something to do with the fox being here," Lannia agreed. "Did you see any fur there, by any chance? If the fox is the dealer, they'd have to have spent at least some time there."

"I didn't. But I didn't really look for any either. Once I saw the note, I took the pictures and got out of there."

"Then fur's still a maybe... Oh! maybe we can make one of those conspiracy board things. Have stuff like 'fur' and 'drugs' and connect them with string!"

Judy's sudden outburst took everyone by surprise. Even she had the decency to look embarrassed. "...Why?" Nathan asked.

"Uh… So we could organize our thoughts better?"

"Why not just use a tablet?"

"Because… A conspiracy board is cooler?"

Nathan sighed. "And where would you get the cork, anyway?"

"Quark?"

"Corkboard. You can put pins in it. It's what conspiracy boards are made out of."

"I don't know. It was just an idea…"

Judy, Nathan, and Lannia spent the next few minutes fruitlessly examining the pictures for more clues. None of them recognized the handwriting, and Lannia didn't notice any of the 'telltale ten' that she had been taught to look for in Security. Once they had exhausted every possibility from the picture, they decided to take another look at the closet.

Nathan's General command class was in a hallway that experienced a lot of traffic between classes, and it was still somewhat frequent throughout most of the day. If they went at night they'd avoid most of the traffic, but that had the risk of being seen by guards on the way to or from the closet, and they'd have to find a way to sneak out of their rooms after curfew. During the day, they'd be free to get close to it without suspicion, but they'd have to get in and out without anyone noticing. While not a piece of cake, Day was definitely the easier of the two options.

One thing that they didn't have to worry about was the security camera in the hallway. While it did exist, it had been broken since before they had even arrived at the academy, which was both a curse and a blessing for their intended task. If it hadn't been broken, they could've asked Jack to hack into it or Lannia could've come up with some sort of cover project and asked Mr. Jackson for access to the cameras. As it was though, it didn't block them from entering the closet by themselves, and it posed another clue: someone with enough power to prevent its repair was in on the deals, if not doing them.

They still had a couple of hours until curfew, which would be plenty of time to get in and out of the closet. After taking far too much time, in Nathan's opinion, coming up with a plan for how to avoid notice and what to do if seen, they set off.

* * *

Precisely three and a half minutes later, three mammals entered a hallway in a building 810 meters away from their previous location. Their gazes swept over every inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling, confirming that they were alone. They began to walk, remaining alert. The shortest one, a female rabbit, suddenly stopped, her ears erect. She had heard something. She quickly whispered something to her companions and they began walking again.

Just moments later, a small brown goat entered the hall from the other end. As he got closer, they could see that he was looking down at a tablet. When he was only a few meters away, he glanced up, seeing them walking by him, but took no more notice and his gaze returned to the tablet. Even after they had passed him, they continued walking, not behaving suspiciously at all. Even when they passed a door marked 'storage,' they kept on walking, only pausing for an almost imperceptibly small moment.

As the clacks of the goat's hooves on the floor changed into lighter taps on the concrete outside and they heard the door closing, they slowed down and started walking in the other direction, back towards the door marked 'storage.' When they arrived and there was no sign of anyone else in the hallway, they stopped.

They briefly got into a huddle, not because they needed to, but because they thought it would look cool. But huddles don't really work when one of three members is only a third the size of the other two, so they got out of the huddle to go over the plan again.

"Everyone know their parts?" Judy asked.

The two ungulates replied with brief nods and began walking down the hallway, the rabbit remaining outside the door. When the impala and deer arrived at a set of two doors marked 'male' and 'female', they stopped and looked back. Judy nodded, leapt up to open the door to the storage closet, and slipped inside.

Once the door was closed, Lannia entered the door marked 'female' and Nathan leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway from the doors that his companions had disappeared behind.

Not even thirty seconds later, the clacking of another set of hooves could be heard. Nathan turned his head towards the end of the hall where the sound was coming from, making sure not to do so too quickly as to seem suspicious. It was none other than Mr. Jackson.

Nathan definitely did not do a suspicious-looking double take. What he did do was pretend to lose interest, glancing back the other way for a few seconds and then to the floor. When Nathan looked at Mr. Jackson again, he was expecting to see him on a trajectory straight down the middle of the hallway. But he didn't; he saw the wildebeest walking directly towards him.

"...Can I help you?" Nathan asked, doing his best to hide how nervous he was.

"Yes, actually. Have you seen a female white-tail deer around here recently?"

"Umm… yeah. Why?"

"She's one of my students and I would like to talk to her about something. Which way did she go?"

As they were planning the 'Closet Heist,' Nathan was skeptical of how much fun Judy and Lannia were having putting together a 'plan so advanced that not even the dumbest fool could un-foolproof it,' but as Mr. Jackson was throwing wrenches into it, Nathan was beginning to see the wisdom in overplanning.

"She's in the restroom right now. You're talking about Lannia, right?"

"Ah. Yes, Lannia is my student," Mr. Jackson replied. "Oh, now I remember where I recognize you from! You were one of the mammals with her in the alley a few days ago."

"...I was…" Nathan expected the Wildebeest to say more, but nothing else came. "What do you want to talk to her about? Maybe I can give her a message?"

"I would rather talk to her in person, but thank you anyway." Mr. Jackson walked to a space on the wall a few meters away from Nathan and leaned against it, replacing the awkward conversation with an awkward silence.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I finally got around to posting chapter 18. It took way too long. Unfortunately, I don't expect to be able to maintain any sort of upload schedule anytime soon, so you're probably going to have to live with intermittent updates for the foreseeable future.

As for the next chapter, It will almost certainly take over two weeks because I'll be taking finals and then traveling for the holidays. I do have some fun plans for the next chapter, though. I won't say what, but I am contemplating a twist... granted, I'm leaning towards not including it, but that just means that if it twists it'll twist for me as well, and I'm writing it. Fun!


	19. Back to the (Farther) Future

After about a minute of awkward silence, Nathan went to knock on the bathroom door Lannia was behind. "Geez, Lannia. Did you fall asleep in there or something?"

A second later, a slightly muffled "Really Nathan? I've only been in here for a few minutes" could be heard.

"Well hurry up! You've got two mammals waiting for you."

"Two? Who else is there?" Lannia had almost asked if Judy was finished, but according to the plan, the rabbit would've come in to get her herself when she was done. If Nathan was asking her to come out, then something must have happened that brought up the need for the cover of him waiting for her.

"One of your teachers, Mr. Jackson. He wants to talk to you about something or other."

Why was Mr. Jackson here? Did he know they were looking into the drugs? He must have overheard them at breakfast. They were screwed. …But Nathan was still using the cover story. Maybe they still had a chance? "I'll be out in a moment," she replied. She waited for a bit before opening the door, partially because she didn't want Mr. Jackson to know that she had been waiting just inside of it, but mostly because she needed some time to gather her nerves.

Just before opening the door she almost took a final deep breath, but remembered that she was in a bathroom and stopped herself just in time. At first, Mr. Jackson was blocked by the open door and she could only see Nathan, but he was revealed as she stepped further into the hall and let the door close behind her. "Isn't it a bit weird for you to be waiting outside of the bathroom for one of your students?"

"Probably yes, but I don't have anything else that I need to be doing right now."

"...Alright… what do you want to talk to me about that's so important, anyway?"

Mr. Jackson glanced at Nathan for a second before replying. "I prefer not bringing this kind of thing up in class to avoid putting any of my students in the spotlight, but I was looking through the class's grades and I noticed that you were missing your station security paper. You might want to get that in before the end of the grading period."

It was exactly the opposite of what Lannia was expecting, and though startling, it was also immensely relieving. "I… uh, I'll look into that…"

She was hoping, and somewhat expected, for him to leave now that he had said his part, but he didn't. "You seem distracted. Is something the matter?"

And just like that, Lannia's short-lived relief washed away. "Uh, no, not really. Just… thinking."

"Are you sure?"

Lying didn't seem to be working. But what could she say? It would have to have enough truth that it would seem genuine, but she couldn't just tell him about what she was worried about, either. Even if his apparent concern was genuine, she couldn't just say 'what has me worried is that we're currently investigating you for drug dealing and you seem to know about it.'

Maybe… it was at least worth a shot. "Err… Well… It's just that you usually seem pretty gruff in class, and I didn't really expect this… out of you…" Lannia trailed off in at least somewhat genuine embarrassment.

Mr. Jackson let out a sharp huff. "Don't get used to it. Just get that paper in."

"I will, Mr. Jackson."

"Good." Without another word, the wildebeest turned around and left back the way he had come in as Lannia and Nathan watched him, dumbfounded.

"...That was not what I was expecting…" Nathan said, almost in a whisper.

"...Yup."

"Soo… when are you going to write that paper?"

"When… Oh! I already wrote it, I just didn't remember to turn it in! It was due yesterday, but I completely forgot about with all the other drama with him right now," Lannia replied. A moment later, she noticed a light on beneath the closet door. "Speaking of forgetting things, how long has Judy been signaling for?"

"Uh, just now, I think. Yeah, It definitely wasn't on when Mr. Jackson left."

"Damnit, I was hoping that I wasn't the only one to forget something," Lannia joked.

Nathan got up from his position against the wall and went to open the closet door. Lannia half-expected another mammal to come down the hall and interrupt them yet again, but fortunately they remained alone.

"I want to know what all that was about, but I want to tell you what I found more," Judy said, "...But we should probably be somewhere else when I do."

The 'somewhere else' that was settled on was Nathan's bunkroom, as Judy and Lannia's bunkmate Carina was currently reading in their room. The rooms weren't exactly intended for gatherings, lacking any furniture besides two double-layer beds, but they were relatively private compared to other locations. The group didn't have to worry about Jack arriving and interrupting them, and Nathan said that their other two roommates never arrived back at the room earlier than ten minutes before curfew. That left them at least forty minutes free to discuss Judy's findings.

The second that the door closed behind them, Lannia was excitedly asking Judy what she found. "Was there more fur? Was the note gone? Oh! Was there a new note?"

Just wasn't quite as bubbly as Lannia, but she wasn't unenthusiastic, either. "First things first, there was fur, but not the helpful kind. Just the residual stuff in corners that you find everywhere that hasn't been recently cleaned."

"You're smiling, so there must be more to it than that," Nathan observed.

"There is. The fact that there was fur means that the closet hasn't been cleaned in a while, even though it's full of cleaning supplies. If there was any fox fur, it would still be there. I did some research, and it turns out that foxes are kind of notorious shedders, so if the fox was there, I would've found some fur."

"How do you know that none of the fur was from the fox?"

"Foxes shed in clumps, like what we found in the alley. There were only single hairs in the closet."

"Alright. So what, the fox isn't part of the drug thing?" Nathan asked.

Lannia replied to that one. "No. It just means that the fox didn't go into the closet. It could still be delivering the drugs to the campus, and someone else brings them to the closet. Or maybe it's in on some other part of the operation, maybe there's more than just this drop point. Also, have we ever actually confirmed that it _is_ drugs that are changing paws? I mean, that's definitely what the note looked like, but it never actually said it."

"It's definitely drugs," Judy confirmed. "There were six half-liter bags full of white powder that certainly wasn't flour."

"Why didn't you say that sooner?"

"I was getting to it. You asked about fur first, so that's what I started with. Plus, there wasn't any interesting detective work that I could boast about involving that. It was just kinda 'Oh, hey look, drugs.'"

"Fair enough, I guess," Lannia replied. "So, what now? We've confirmed that there really are drug deals and that the closet is used as a hub for them, and we know that the fox doesn't go in that closet. But what does that actually mean for us?"

"Uhh… I'm not really sure…" Judy said. "Maybe… no… I have no idea."

"I mean… we could watch the closet and see if anyone goes in or out…" Lannia proposed, though she didn't sound like she was fully behind the idea.

"We can't do that with all of our classes, there's not enough time," Nathan said.

"Jack it is, then?" Lannia asked.

"I mean… I don't really want to ask him to hack into an instructor's computer, especially if he's innocent…" Judy wrung her fingers, "but I don't really see another way to find out, either…"

"It's not like Jack would mind doing it. He'd probably jump at the opportunity."

"I suppose… Alright. We'll ask him."

The discussion shifted to much more mundane matters while the group waited for Jack to get back before curfew, hoping that he would arrive before the other roommates. When a knock on the door came from a point much too high for it to have been Jack, they knew that he had not. Judy and Lannia went back to their room just down the hall, mildly disappointed. Nathan wouldn't have any trouble giving him the message, but they had wanted to have an actual discussion.

In the end, Jack didn't find anything incriminating on Mr. Jackson's personal computer, nor was anything found on the working security cameras near the area where the found the fur or the building with the drug drops.

Instead, there were mysterious gaps, sections an hour in length simply missing from the cameras' feed. They weren't even at the same time of day, week, or month. The only pattern that Jack could find was that it never happened on a Monday and that no even hours were missing, only odd ones, for some reason. There was a pattern, but it wasn't nearly concrete enough to make any predictions on when whoever it was would be there next.

After a week of hoping to find something, but still having no developments, they decided that they weren't getting anywhere as they were. There was no more evidence pointing to Mr. Jackson, and with the strange bout of kindness shown to Lannia in the hallway, they decided that he was probably trustworthy.

Even though they were handing him the cased, they were still too nervous to tell him that they had suspected that he was behind it. Judy and Lannia had a bit of fun coming up with a cover story to explain how they got the information, and this time Nathan joined them after seeing how effective their plan was in the hallway.

After passing the case to him, Mr. Jackson berated them on not bringing it to security sooner and gave them all a day of cafeteria clean-up duty. Immediately after, though, he commended them on discovering it and finding out as much as they had on their own.

When Lannia asked him if he had found anything about it at the end of class three days later, he said "We value confidentiality among our cadets, so I'm not actually allowed to tell you if we have found anything. Also, we found them."

"But didn-"

"Nope. I'm not allowed to tell you."

"Oh! Oh. I see." Lannia grinned and turned to leave the room. When she glanced back before closing the door behind her, Mr. Jackson was already looking down at a tablet on his desk, seemingly absorbed in his work.

* * *

Nathan was the first to stir from the group's mutual reminiscence. "Were they really all that glorious? I mean, we didn't really find anything out."

"No, we found plenty of stuff out, we just never found out who did it," Lannia replied.

"But wasn't that was kind of the point?"f

"Well, we did do kind of a lot, and it was fun," Judy joined in. "Plus, we impressed Mr. Jackson. I'm counting it as Glory Days."

"Eh… Yeah, I guess you have a good point. We were just students after all. All the stuff after the academy never actually felt quite as… intense? As that. It was all just following orders, mostly."

"Exactly. Back then, we were on our own."

"Ending was still a bit anticlimactic, though…"

Judy's thoughts strayed away from Nathan and Lannia's continued talking, mostly agreeing with each other at this point, when another thought came.

_That was me._

_What do you mean, that was you?_

_I meant what I said. That fox that you were looking for at the academy was me._

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This flashback scene went on a bit longer than I had intended it to, and it didn't really tie in that much with the rest of the story, so I got a bit stuck for motivation on it. A few days ago, though, I had an idea of how I could end it in a way that could tie it into the rest of the story so well that it would like that was what I was planning all along, which will all be explained in the next chapter, along with at least some of Nick's backstory.

On a completely separate note, I've been reading {Of Clocks and Calendars} by Jericho_Pryce, and it instantly became one of my favorite stories in the fandom. Normally I wouldn't gush about other people's works like this in my authors' notes, but this one is just so good. I highly recommend that you read at least the first chapter and not just take a look at the summary, because after that, you'll want to read the rest. Even a friend of mine who said "I don't think I'll like the premise, but the prose is great" switched their opinion to "I love it all" after they finished the chapter.


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